My vision to spin records consisted of my wearing a custom made T-shirt, of showing a locally produced landmark stencil and involved my being inundated by hoardes of the world’s creatively repressed and suitably impressed. In short, I felt the work was going to be easy and profitable in a very short time, (somewhere along the lines of ‘immediately’) and, that I was going to change the World by liberating creativity from it’s prison of denial.

My work was going to be THAT easy? Ha! How reality is so different from imagining!

In preparation for my highly anticipated day’s work, I bought a large postcard of the Eiffel tower and spent around eight hours cutting a nicely detailed stencil for application to a finished record.

At last, five PM and wearing custom designed promotional T-shirt, I felt I was ready.

The crowds I drew were nothing short of spectacular. I received applause, cheering, and a single customer after over four hours… Whom proved to be my only one at that! People were shy, afraid, timid and some appeared to be bordering on violence in their efforts to get away from my offer to share the creative experience.

Even the CHILDREN tried crawling under a rock; and their reaction surprised me most of all. Out of all of my audiences, only one loud American woman appeared to get the message that my purpose on the street was not aimed at self gratification and glory. To the rest, I was but a showman selling objects of no regard. Thus, in hindsight, I realize my message was lost in transmission; festival is NOT street presentation and as I folded down my kit, I remembered the street performers I had met and talked shop with. I definitely need a street guise.

Some years ago I was caught up in the flow of street traders, gansters and con-merchants and to me, it appears that world is still alive and strong. Ethics run high amongst these people, until or unless the lines are crossed! A great example of this lies in the experience of Maria. She felt convinced she was seeing the shell game clearly – and risked 40 Euro on it and lost immediately. A short time afterwards, the hustler – having seen she was with me working on the street – returned her money to her. Good on him. Lucky Maria! We also witness what appeared to be a turf battle between rival gangs of trinket sellers; individual sellers establish a pitch within their own distribution network, paying 10 Euros per day for the rights to stand on one spot. When another distribution network overlaps the first one.. well… you should have seen them run! Gangs of sellers running after others – all clutching armloads of jingling stock… well it was funny to say the least. Then the police arrive and the streets are miraculously cleared of all sellers, hustlers and card sharks… for several minutes more – until it starts again. There’s never a dull moment, I must say!

Thus, Sunday came and went and our free parking will expire at 9am. I will move on from Paris then, far richer from the experience and resolved to completely redesign my public street presentation – which is going to be interesting and perhaps a bit of a shame for, I never wanted to sensationalize the creative experience for anyone; with polite and informal invitation, I did always strive to humanize creative quality and shine a light onto it’s spontaneous universality. The world is not so. People need someone to look up to, to aspire to or to follow.

Roll on, roll on.

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