Busking zine pages 9-12!

busking zine! pages 5-8

hooray!
sorry this took a couple days.. i ended up working 16 hours a day for the last two days and didn't really get anything else done. but here it is now!

Busking Zine! Issue 1!

After months (months!) of work, it's almost done. Here's the first four pages. I'll try and put four up every day for the next week.

in exile: busking

yesterday i had yet another shitty experience busking, which finally pushed me over the edge. i don't do that in this city anymore. on a good day i have a few nice interactions while being consciously ignored by the shitheads in suits that pass me on a daily basis and yet somehow still won't make eye contact. to be fair, i have a few positive interactions with people in suits. statistically, though, it's unlikely.

most of the time the weirdos and homebums, ie people who aren't suits, are really nice, and interactions with them are what keeps me feeling like a human being. but then occasionally they ask me for money, which is fine, or steal my money, which is not fine, or get up in my face trying to get me to kiss them, which is not fine, or leer at me and tell me that playing accordion is "hot", not fine, or pretend to shoot me in the face with their hand, at point blank, as they walk past, not fine, or give me a nickel "to wash my panties with", whatever the fuck that fucking means, not fine, or, yesterday, stand right beside me panhandling to people i'm trying to get money out of myself, and when i ask them nicely to give me a little more space than one metre, stand there and threaten/intimidate/insult me/threaten to take my money/take my shit/kick me in the face/etc, imitate me, mock me, say every nasty thing about me that they can think of to everyone who's passing by, and just generally demean me, until i finally left.

what frustrates me even more about it, aside from no longer feeling comfortable with doing the one thing that most reliably makes me self-sufficient, is that the only way i could have solved that situation was to get someone to call the fucking biz, who are a bunch of overgrown teenagers pretending to be cops, being abusive and shitty and having no accountability, and who generally exist to power-trip on homeless folks and panhandlers.

so i really wanted to be like, "you're putting me into a situation where the only way i can make myself feel safe is to validate these shitty people that will abuse you." which sounds like blaming the victim to me, but i don't really know how else to analyze this.

part of why this whole thing is so disturbing to me is it's instilled a genuine fear in me of native homebums, because that's who it is, every time. i don't really know how to deal with the fact that i'm developing a fear and hatred of a visible minority. it's not nice. i guess i can balance that with my understanding of the history that created this context. i'm never sure whether to put myself into the same category as someone who feels alienated by most of society and frequently gets treated like something less than human by most of society, or into the category of white privileged person who's making it even harder for this native lady who's already dealing with the infinite effects of colonization, and alcoholism, and probably a low/no income.

i don't want to feel oppressed by everyone including people who are even more fucked than i am, but i also don't want to play the role of "poor suffering white girl with an education from a middle class background who can't play her accordion because of all the panhandlers scaring her away."

i could go on about this forever. i don't know what to say. but i'm not busking in this city anymore.

I've finally emerged from the darkness of winter.

I've had a few weeks of being sometimes okay and sometimes not, (a huge improvement over the previous couple months of not feeling like a human being at all), but yesterday (or the day before?) i was suddenly completely confident that i was okay again,
that if something brings me down it will be temporary,
that i won't need to hide in bed for days at a time,
that i care about everything again,
that i'm willing to go out at night,
that i'm consumed again by a fiery desire to do everything.

nothing has changed, in a physical sense,
except that i'm finally above the surface of the water, and no longer afraid of slipping below it,
and that a problem is now only a problem, and i no longer have to worry about it breaking that delicate thread supporting all of my emotional weight.

so i realised that, while i was at my desk painting a sign for our distro, and actually cried because i was so glad.
i'm so glad to be back, i'm so glad to be back.

I'm deliberately taking the most cynical slant i can on this....

International Development!

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere teach english in a foreign country to make their jet setting and fetishization of other cultures look edgy and progressive.

In which a bunch of people from the north FLY (at huge environmental expense) to the south to help people there build basic structures which anyone could build, including the people who are living there and will be using those structures. Often privileged volunteers have to be trained before they can be useful, but for some reason they don't just train people WHO ARE ALREADY THERE instead.

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere get jobs or paid volunteering positions at ngos in the south which lots of local people in that area are not only qualified to do but who probably also understand better how to do that job in a way that makes sense in that specific place.

In which a bunch of religious nuts go and impose their guilt and ignorance on people who were doing just fine without it.

In which a bunch of overdeveloped westerners who would probably die within months if they didn't have running water and electricity go to "underdeveloped", relatively sustainable places, "teach" the locals how to live better, often with no real consideration for their means or their most immediate needs, and go home feeling smug because they took cold showers for a few months and survived.

In which a bunch of white people go to exotic places to learn exotic things for a few months, mostly hang out with other white people, and then go home and feel really worldly when they tell their friends about it.

In which privigeled north americans go to south america to buy knock offs of traditional south american crafts, made in sweatshops, which they could have just bought in north america or on the internet, and then take them home and tell their friends all about their "authentic" experience and knowledge of that culture

Not to say that every attempt to "help the underprivileged" is entirely ego-driven, wasteful, counterproductive, ethnocentric, racist or classist. But lots of them are lots of those things.

And really, do we really need more development?
I just want someone to figure out how to de-develop north america back down to something sustainable.

disclaimer: someone i know has made the point that critiquing international development on the grounds that we're a bunch of idiots and folks in the third world know what's up is also sort of a fetishization/idealization of "the other". this can be true.

oh hai can we be friends kthx bye.

sometimes when i'm walking around the neighborhood i see folks who are wearing all black, but who don't have what i think of as the typical anarchist aesthetic. usually they're either native folks or people who maybe look like they listen to hip hop or something. but, when i see the all-black uniform, i instinctively hope that we are somehow on the same side, that maybe they also have some anarchist tendencies, whether or not they identify as anarchists. (native folks do have, afterall, even more reasons to hate the gov than the rest of us)

i also have this reaction to neck tattoos. there's just something about a neck tattoo that says "i don't give a fuck," and i kinda secretly like it.

of course, i could be entirely wrong about all of this, and if the shit hits the fan i probably shouldn't just assume that i can trust everyone who wears black.

but still. it's strangely reassuring.