It's a Beautiful World

Clara - my silent busking companion

When I busk it’s as much about the people I meet as what’s in the pot (and yes, I do actually put out a teapot for tips).

When I moved out of Dublin, I missed my Saturday ‘residency’ at the Dublin Food Co-op.  Over a six year period, it’s where I played most Saturdays and made quite a few friends.  From my new home which is on the border of three counties, I went busking, to test the waters, in lots of different places.  My partner also came along - for her, she was seeing most of these places for the first time.  Once we covered our fuel and food for the trips, we were happy.  She often remarked that we were like paid tourists.

Within a couple of months, I found that I was welcome at a small shopping mall and I made that my regular Saturday gig and the proceeds would go a long way toward to weeks groceries.  We’d shop for food after my two or three hours busking, and all in the closest town to home.

When you play regularly at the same place, you soon start recognising faces and people get to know you a little.  There were many old ladies who initially would stop and admire my dog Clara and I’d more often than not wind up with a can or two of Pedigree Chum and more packets of dog treats than we’d use in a week but these same ladies often stuck around for a song or two and were generous with tips too. 

A man in his early twenties was also a regular though he was more likely to walk past and quietly drop a coin into my case and it wasn’t until, after not seeing him for a few weeks - or months perhaps - that he came along and was sporting a pretty full beard.  He’s fairly heavily built and the beard really suited him in a sort of Henry the eighth way.  As he passed and donated, and being at the end of a song, I told him the beard looked well.  He stopped and looked surprised.  We’d never spoken before but Mike, I’ll call hime Mike, told me he’d grown it to hide.  I asked what he was hiding from and he said life in general.  I asked hime why hide and he explained that his fiancee had broken off their relationship some weeks before and now, he only ventured out when he had to.  I told him I was sorry and that the beard really suited him regardless.

A few weeks later, he stopped and I asked him how he was doing.  Great, he told me and went on to tell me he was going back to college and looking forward to moving on and that since he’d cheered up, quite a few people had admired the beard and so it would be staying for now.  Coincidentally, I’d just heard that I too would be heading for college so we chatted about that for a while and I was surprised when the following week he told me he’d changed his mind and was looking at visiting a therapist and a couple of weeks after that, he was back to the college plan.

I wrote a song on Sunday evening.  It’s for a collaboration with a student who’s studying singing specifically and hopefully to be sung by him in November at a suicide awareness event.  The song was one of those that seemed to write itself once I gave it my attention and the ending took me by surprise.  It was only when I played it for the man who’ll be singing it, I realised that unconsciously, I think my encounters with Mike were probably responsible for the direction it took. 

Maybe there's someone out there praying for me 

I like the song and, more importantly, so does the man who’ll be singing it in November.  I sang it on a rainy day busk in Mullingar on Friday and it seems the public like it too.

I look forward to playing it for Mike some day soon. 

Beautiful morning it’s a 

beautiful day

blue blue sky - clouds are

rolling away

rolling away

Dark dark night I thought would 

never end

           thought I’d never get through it             

couldn’t pretend

no I couldn’t pretend

                  maybe there’s someone out there                 

praying for me    

and a god up there listening

cause now I can see

there must someone out there  

praying for me    

and a god up there hearing

                                       cause now I see                                           

on this beautiful morning

that it’s a beautiful world

and I’m finally over

                             that beautiful girl                                

   it’s a beautiful world      

a beautiful world