Conscious and collective actions
It’s been already two years that I’m traveling around Europe, and common questions arise all the time in the life of traveler artists: Who am I, who I want to be and how do I present myself to the world? The longer we travel, the most our identities enter in conflict. They blur, fall, rebuild and emerge like a software actualization. We seem to be the same, but we profoundly aren’t. Traveling changed me in unthinkable ways, and overall in positive ones. Often people ask me if it's easier for me to live on the road, instead of staying in my country working daily on a regular job. I always mention that the nomad life is harder, nobody takes care of yourself, it’s difficult to clear the road of obstacles, it requires more effort and you are more vulnerable. Nonetheless, the happiness and the experiences traduced in self-growth are countless. The feeling that my trip started only two months ago still remains, in my new life there are no Mondays or Sundays. I made my comfort zone outside what it was usually, and the image I had about stability completely fell apart. Sometimes I had only five euros in my pocket, but sometimes I also made fifty in 3 minutes. I have met wonderful people that changed my life and showed me parts of myself that I didn’t know that even existed.
Soon after I moved to Europe I started to busk, an activity that I never thought I would ever do. Everything about it is intriguing: the previous moment before undertaking the essential task of pick the perfect pitch, settle down, set the equipment, play, let yourself be, interact with the audience. Playing in the streets demands an enormous ego workout, and I will tell a story about it in the following paragraphs.
Around 6 months after my travel began I arrived in Bosnia. Sarajevo revealed itself as a very generous city in which I could earn a lot of money while deeply engage with the locals. I shared the streets with beggars, war veterans and old people who extended their hands for hours waiting for some coins. This new reality is very contrasting and raw for a musician like me who developed his art in an academic environment, playing many concerts with granted public every week. Back in my previous life, my musical actions and decisions were affected by this invisible field that influences art and artists called reputation. Whether you care or not about it, it’s something that edifies itself, and artists acquire it throughout the time officiating as a validation of what they do among their peers and the world.
While I stayed in Sarajevo, I used to walk a lot and I often found little kids, about seven or eight-years-old, wandering around with ragged clothes and without proper coats when the temperature was barely reaching 5 °C. They were singing traditional Bosnian songs, sometimes a cappella and sometimes accompanied by an accordion or a keyboard toy. Their repertoire consisted of only three songs that they repeated in a loop for hours. They didn’t play because it was fun, they did it because they had to survive. Also, I was doing it, and I was completely unknown in these lands like them, since after I could discover that they were foreigners too. Recurrently, these little kids used to stand in front of me and sing out loud while I was playing my set. Their goal was undoubtedly clear, force me to leave my pitch and leave them the street. I always ended leaving and returning when they already have left the spot. It is very sad the fact that they are so young and have to struggle in a world that turned their backs into them to get money to get through. But yet very interesting to notice they were expressing this rough and raw reality with music and delivering it in the greatest of ways. This situation still makes me think and rethink, day after day, about what is our role as musicians, what is the purpose of our musical act, but more importantly, what is our relationship with ourselves, our peers and the world itself. But also forced me to wonder about what reputation is. And also, don't we have a wrong and biased conception of what is reputation and stability? Are our problems that big as we think they are? Are we really lacking something? Or it’s just the way we choose to perceive life. And last but not least, who am I now?
Traveling converted me into a human being more sensitive, less complicated, less stressed, and changed me in ways I can’t explain with words. There were times when I didn’t have a roof above my head, and I don’t longer worry about it since it always appears a solution for the seeker. Traveling enrich and open yourself the gates of new worlds. Nonetheless, if you open one of these, what is behind that door can enter into you too.
I wrote this article one year ago as a birthday reflection. One year later, under the COVID-19 situation, I wonder what was of the life of these kids, if they have a place to sleep, money, and food. I found myself reading the story, grateful for all that I have, surprised that I still make myself the same existential questions about reputation, musical purpose, stability. In a world that is upside down, it urges us to reevaluate our whole actions, decisions, plans and ways of life. Nevertheless, the difference now is that I don’t feel alone in the boat, and that could be an encouraging motor to finally abandon the unnecessary to do what is needed from me, from you, from us in a world that asks more than ever conscious and collective actions.