One World, Out On the Street

I'm an artist who's painted on the street- and various other strange places- for many years. It's a wonderful educational process. Out of the literally thousands of people I've met doing that, I actively disliked only three.

One turned out to be a serial killer [Francois][cold, icky vibe], one was just a snotty little nasty person looking for a fight, and one shoved me from behind to show off for his fellow skinheaded, testosterone-impaired stupid buddies. So basically, you'd have to be psychotic, mean, or physically assault me to make the list.

I love street musicians. When I was organizing street art exhibitions in New Paltz years ago, I managed to get a bunch of people [from celloists and flautists to professional djun djun players] to play on the streets downtown. The memories of people bopping up and down the street to Tani Tabal's African Percussion Project will never leave me.

People willing to make music on the street are courageous angels to my mind.

I wondered at the sight of people who lived in their insulated regulated inundated self-created boxes being broken out of that tiny little fake reality long enough to become real humans again- just by inserting a little of that magic into their perception at that moment. There's something there that just gives me joy and lights up my world. Somehow street musicians bring out that sparkling aspect of people.

My best street scenes always have involved people bouncing around in their joy- and there was always music in the vicinity when that happened.

I used to wonder what would happen if all the street musicians around the world could get together and jam. I wondered what it would be like if every town had music playing in its streets- had people dancing in its streets.

One friend of mine [that I've never met- from a message board] is a classical musician. 

He posted this.

Enjoy.

...then get yourself to their website, and look at all the projects they're doing, and find ways to support them.