Blog Update - How I met the Gypsy King

Well the last few days have been a type of hellish experience. It started from a weekend on the drink. Raki. Enough to make me drunk for two days.

Living on the street, and playing music on the street, is not conducive with a constant party lifestyle. One needs a place to rest and recover when one lives like a walking party wagon constantly. One does not have a place to recover when one lives on the street.

So I went pretty low. It's one of those things that friends and people want you to drink and have a good time with them and have you around because you're cool and different but it's moments like these when I'm reminded that the rules that I need to follow for my life are different to the rules that other people follow for theirs. I have different boundaries to theirs. It's not that I can't trust people it's just that I can only trust myself to know what I really need for me.

I can trust people to be who and what they are and only I will take care of myself properly the way that I need.

I went to Malia and back like I said. I went to Rethynmo with high hopes of busking that evening. I walked the city for an hour and didn't find any clear easy pitches, feeling pretty low I didn't feel like any confrontations so I just decided to not play. When I have no energy, its social interaction I fear the most. I'm an introvert. People don't get that. I have a couple of drinks or I play music on the street and people are convinced I'm open and friendly all the time. No 90 percent of the time, I need to be alone and away the fuck from all you fuckers. Excuse me.

So I walk up the hill in hopes of getting a lift and don't get one. I sleep on the hill for the night and wake up and try again in the morning. I'm not successful so I walk to the bus station and buy a ticket to Chania. I get to Chania and find a place in a park to sleep and chill and make a coffee. I'm exactly broke again so playing in the night is a necessity.

I find a place I've played before when the sun sets a bit and make bugger all, an art gallery opens behind me and asks me to stop for their grand opening day which starts in half an hour. I agree and just accept it. Chania is full of buskers, beggars, street vendors and gypsies. It's a difficult place to make money at times and I just became fed up. Tourists make me feel sick in my gut.

I fantasized that tourists and gypsies, were the two polar opposites that hold this reality together. Like the Apollian, Dionysian conflict all over again. I'm not sure exactly which is Apollo and which is Dionysos but you can use your imagination a bit.

Again, I admire the gypsies. A girl stands with a small piano accordian in front of some rich looking tourists sitting in a bench overlooking a beautiful beach vista. The tourists, who seem swedish or something look extremely unhappy. The girl continues playing. She knows they won't hurt her. She has power over them. Eventually they'll have to move or give her some money, the latter, the easier option. The daughter in the family on the bench is saying repeatedly to the gypsy girl who is clearly not listening, "Go away! Why don't you just go away!"

The issue with street people for me mainly is that the more there are, the higher the people's psychological defenses and the harder it is for me to be noticed and not ignored. This is just a fact, anywhere I go. If I can find a place out of the way that is away from the beggars and gypsies and vendors, even if it's kind of quiet, I can make more money. Chania is saturated not only with this but also with market vendors selling a thousand types of jewellery and also other musicians, some of them playing traditional, some playing jazz and some playing big sound with big amps. Basically, I make the most money in a place where I can be exclusive. Chania, I cannot.

I decide my best option is to get out immediately with less than ten euro in my pocket. So I walk all the way to the highway, 8 kilometres and sleep next to the highway getting eaten by mosquitos the whole night to get up in the morning in order hitch a lift to heraklion. I normally sleep near the beach where there aren't many mosquitos. I need to purchase a small tent soon.

I try to hitch in the morning am unsuccessful. I sit for a frothy frappe made from nescafe (the popular drink in the hot sun here, had for a euro) and try again. Some police wave me on, not even bothering to stop just motioning with their hand. I stick around for a good twenty minutes more but the sun has won and it's time to walk the 8 kilometres back into tourist hell.

I understand people that travel with money would find these places a kind of paradise. No, for me they are definitely a type of hell.

I get back into Chania and wander to a park I was laying in before having used all my money to buy water and two kilos of oranges. This is where I meet Marco, a man from barcelona who claims to be the Gyspy King. A crazy guy, just like me. You forget how crazy you are until you meet someone crazier. He wants me to play guitar as he and his friend are selling art and playing music on the path nearby. He's the type that speaks over you and doesn't listen when you have something to say unless you wait for an interval in his energy flow. Despite this, I prefer this type of crazy to the society type of crazy. The repressed maniacs that walk around in normal clothes with normal lives and normal jobs, claiming to be normal. I feel what they feel in their bodies and I feel tension. The world of normality is just a fancy way of dealing with emotional repression and then storing it in the body so it can never be expressed. People walk around like a shaken soda pop all the time.

This world is fucking crazy.

So Marco the gypsy king plays me a couple of flamencoesque spanish gypsy songs.

It's nice enough, some other friends join us, including a 74 year old woman who looks like she's in her 40s. I offer oranges, my only form of commerce at the moment.

They have a squat nearby and a bed and I take up their offer to sleep there for the afternoon. My intuition says it's all good and no problems with this lot.

I get a good sleep.

I play 45 minutes for 2 euros at the last spot. The guy selling cruise ship tickets loves my music and gives me a euro. Marco finds me and stops to listen. I know there is nothing wrong with the music, I have enough reference points. I look at people in the eyes and I see people deliberately avoiding me and deliberately repressing natural reactions that would precipitate a money in my case.

This kind of behaviour makes me angry. The defences of people have been so hardened that I'm blocked out too. My only hope is to smile at the kids, they don't have defenses like their parents. But the parents are even roping in their kids. One parent literally on a leash. The gypsies have done their job here.

I play another spot where I am normally interrupted by a gypsy drummer boy who believes he is in ownership of this one spot that actually makes me money. I make four euros before he and his mother turn up and start a conversation in greek through another person, asking me to move to another place. This isn't how it works, this is not property, this is the street. But once she understands that I am not complying to her demands to move. They start to immitate my speaking in a sarcastic way and visibly show me disrespect with their body language. I just say over and over, you don't own the street and one day you're going to have to learn to respect other people.

I'm having my little righteous spin for the day.

The boy is told by the mother to drum right next to me and he commences. I'm not competition for a cute kid with a drum. This is 'their' spot. Some passer byers stop and sympathise with me but I just pack up and leave. I can do nothing.

I could grab the drum and throw it into the ocean but that would probably start a long conflict with the gypsies of which I am sure to lose.

The gypsy king assures me that if I let them know that I know him, they won't fuck with me. Unfortunately, his title is largely self proclaimed and more by gypsies in italy, not here. I let him know there is no gypsy king, no one can rule the gypsies. He puffed his chest and gave me his reasons.

I get four euros in the short space between starting and getting stopped by the drummer boy.

That's enough for a slice of pizza and a beer.

I sit in a popular hipster spot for a while and drink my beer quietly out of the town centre. A piano accordian starts up behind me, playing to unsuspecting restaurant patrons. He's not a bad player, his friend a teenage boy is playing a tambourine with it and plays terribly and out of time. Before one song is half-way through his friend is walking around asking for money.

It's a spectactle to watch the gypsies and the reactions of other people. I love seeing the tourists suffer. The fake energy that comes from them oozes like a flowing font of eternal bullshit. It's not fun when you depend on the money that you'd be making if they weren't their putting people's defenses so high.

I decide to go back to drummer boy's spot and find he's disappeared for the night.

I see Marco again and tell him, I have to get out of here, there's too many gypsies. He agrees.

I play and get nowhere for a while. I play one of my songs and get a bit angry. Wow I need to get out of here. Come on, give me enough for a ticket. My voice gets louder without shouting and people start to pay attention.

After an hour of playing I've made 19 euro. Bus ticket is 15. Ok. I'm getting out of here.

I sleep on the roof that I sleep on away from the gypsies in Chania. I get the bus the next morning.

I play twice in Heraklion that day and make good money. The shops love me. The locals love me and there's an acceptable amount of tourists. And, there's not so many gypsies.

I can be independent again.

Never will I go back to Chania. Ok, well, not for now.

That's the story of how I met the Gyspy King.

Monty