Busking is a very ancient art, the blogging and tweeting of another age. Like the blogger and the tweeter, the busker can unselfconsciously, and regardless of ability, command a certain amount of public attention.
You can sing in tune or sing flat, hit the note or miss it, forget the words or make them up. Just as bloggers can turn a stylish paragraph or churn out self regarding rubbish and tweeters can report every breath they draw on the assumption that the world is waiting for the news.
Some buskers, however, are bloggers in disguise, bloggers without the technology. I wouldn't have minded hearing Emma Ayres busking for Queensland flood relief and perhaps it was her talented example that caused me to exhibit a fatal moment of hesitation the other day in Rundle Mall.
'My grandfather,' said the nearest busker, latching on to my indecisive groping for some coins, 'my grandfather used to walk the 'susso' tracks during the Depression.'
He was taking a break from his song. I use the singular advisedly because his repertoire was basically 'Goodnight Irene'. He sang it straight, hummed it, whistled bits of it, yodelled it. But it was always 'Goodnight Irene'.
His voice, honed and gravelled by a lifetime's unfiltered tobacco and strong drink, rasped by age and disappointment, edged with the cynicism of a thousand defeats, had unique, ear-assaulting qualities beyond the reach of metaphor or comparison.
'The 'susso' was sort of like the dole is now,' he said, 'it was short for sustenation or somethin' like that. What they'd do, they'd walk from place to place in the bush takin' on whatever jobs were available. Sometimes they'd cut wood, sometimes dig postholes, sometimes they'd be dunny men. You know about the dunny men?' I did, but I could feel a refresher course coming up.
'In the bush townships they'd have the old thunderboxes and the dunny men would come along and take away the full one and leave an empty. My granddad swore he whipped one right out from under some woman up around the mallee somewhere. Her natural reaction was to get away as quick as she could and so out she comes into the light of day ...'
I assembled some coins from several pockets.
'Dangerous work of course. See, they used to get corroded. The welds at the bottom of the can would rust out. Well, me granddad reckons one day he saw a bloke hoist a