Close Encounters of the Urban Kind: Breaching Social Norms

Anecdotes from the Streets

Breaching Social Norms

There I was, one afternoon in the spring, trying to build an audience...

And this guy walks up. Woohoo! Maybe he wants to see some magic!

Or not.

Oookay. So why'd you stop? What's up?

He starts saying "OHHHHH...."

...and he doesn't stop.

For an entire minute.

I just stared at him.

He explained: he's part of a group that tries to breach social norms.
He wanted to see my reaction. Most people just leave after a few seconds.
I stayed... cuz, you know, my spot.

So I guess my lack of reaction freaked him out.

Right. Okay. Bye bye.

*I am not a cartoonist. I cannot draw and normally do not communicate with pictures. But! That's what I felt like doing this week. And thus begins my series on random street anecdotes, narrated through PAINT-created stick figures.

The Things in the Hat

A young accordionist, sitting down on a little brick half-wall, looked over to me occasionally as he played. His attention was mostly turned towards the pedestrians who walked pass him from both directions, but an aspiring anthropologist was buzzing around nearby, interrupting his concentration with a constant stream of questions - and he was too polite not to answer.

This particular performer, who performs on weekends for fun - who corrected me when I asked him about his work ("I don't really call this work. I call it play"), told me that his favorite thing about street performing is "getting tipped with stuff that isn't cash." Inside his open accordion case, he's found sandwiches, CD's, and even a bottle of Crystal Light.

I watched a guitar player performing in Jackson Station light up with surprise after he realized that someone had just given him a miniature Virgin Mary statue made - he said after taking a cursory look at it - in real gold.

One performer told me that he's "been tipped joints before," "candy by kids, chewing gum, chocolate," and "gift cards" - the largest of which was "one of those Visas with $25 on it." Business cards seem to be a regular form of payment/tip/donation across the board for many street performers. Another busker, a drummer, said to me (in equal parts awe and confusion), that someone somehow found the effort and time to regularly drop carefully-written letters into his bucket - letters that speak of how annoying they find his music to be.

Back in 2011, when I was first trying my hand at street performing at an art walk in Memphis, Tennessee, my first non-cash tip was a check made out to me by someone who didn't have any cash on hand. My first day busking in Chicago, on the day of the Saint Patrick's Day Parade in 2014, I was given a penny that (I was told) had been crushed on the railroad tracks. At the end of another show, I also found a little pink pill in my hat.

My first Chicago hat! Note the little pink pill (which I promptly threw out) and the railroad-crushed penny.

It's fun, sometimes, to get something other than cash. But other times - like in the case of the drummer who received directly hateful letters, the messages that these objects convey are not always transmitted in good faith. One African American street performer, for example, receives racially-charged fake bills every so often. He gave me one of these bills as an example:

This is a bogus bill - one created with racial and racist humor.
A commentary and brief analysis of this bill can be found here.

While it's impossible to know the intentions of the individuals who give these bills as tips or donations - (giving the giver the benefit of the doubt) maybe they grabbed the wrong bill, maybe they thought it would be funny, maybe they didn't want to give him any actual real money, or maybe they actually are fully aware of the hostility in the message that they are trying to convey, there's something to be said in taking a closer look at these objects. If the number on a bill conveys how much a spectator valued a show (with the caveat that some passersby can only afford to give so much), the type of object may also reveal what a given spectator thinks of a given performer or performance.

And however much thought or thoughtlessness was put into giving a particular object, it is still the primary way that most spectators engage and communicate with the performers they watch.

The Story of My Magic

Time to take a step away from street performing this week and just talk about magic. I was a magician long before I started street performing, after all. Still, even though my experience with being a busker is still in its early stages, my love of magic has always been intricately tied in with my love of performance.

Here’s the story I tell anyone who asks:

When I was really really little, my big brother showed me a trick where he pulled his thumb off his hand. I was in awe. Then he taught me how to do it, and I was hooked. At the tender age of five (or six, or seven, cuz my memory of life events sucks), I started asking for magic kits and magic tricks for Christmas  and birthdays. In high school, after I did a research project on Houdini, I started pursuing magic more seriously. By the time college came around, I was performing at dormitory events and holding annual shows for my school.

If I delve into that story a little bit more deeply, I realize that magic for me has never just been about the magic tricks:

There was a time in middle school when I stopped learning new magic tricks. I had an arsenal of effects pulled together from various magic kits for kids buried away in the back of my mind; I had used them in magic shows for the family at holidays.

And then I had grown up.

I still had a couple tricks up my sleeve (ba duh dumm! okay, bad pun). 

See? Literally. A deck of cards up my sleeve... on my sleeve?
Actually, I have no idea how I did this.
(photo by Kimberly Maize)

I have been palming coins and making them vanish (just that one move) for as long as I can remember. First, with fake plastic quarters and then with real ones. I knew the most basic of self-working card trick principles. And then I had maybe five tricks that I had learned from The World’s Greatest Magic, a television show from the 90’s that I watched religiously. I did maybe three of those tricks over and over again for different audiences, if the time for it came up. But that was it.

Freshman year of high school, my English teacher gave us a weekly assignment called “Vocab Visuals.” Each week, my classmates and I were given a word from our weekly vocabulary list, and we had to find some way to present that word in a visually impactful way.

This was the trigger that pulled me back into my childhood hobby.

Every week, I dug up an old trick that I knew. I took the trick and – thanks to the nature of the assignment – was forced to create a new story, a new presentation that aligned with the vocabulary word I was presenting that week. A simple four aces production became a story about four brothers finding each other again after two were arrested. I don’t remember all the vocabulary words now, and I certainly don’t remember all the stories I had told each week, but I do know this: every single trick that I had presented back then came from magic kits designed for children. Somehow, with the scarcest of magical resources, I had managed to tell stories.

There was a moment in high school when I jumped on a magical bandwagon, when I left the realm of magic tricks for kids and started learning the trendiest tricks of the time. I’ll be honest: it was a great time. This was when I learned pretty much everything that I now know about magic – the sleights, the history, and the possibilities. If you see me perform today (on the fly and not in a show), you’ll probably see me perform something that I learned from this era… from, I guess, what would have been my magical adolescence.

Come to think of it, that mus have been around the time when I got my straight jacket.
Cuz, you know. I probably needed.
(photo by KimbaWayne Photography)

I can’t deny that the routines I learned from that era generate the loudest reactions, the most shock. But what I find most challenging these days – what I enjoy most – is those moments when I take a trick and tell my own story with it. When I was Joan of Arc for a presentation in a college Shakespeare course, I took some effects that I knew – some things that I barely ever use – and blended them into the play. It happened again more recently, but less intentionally, when I took my show out to the street… as, show by show, I polished and changed my street routine as the day went on, as I learned what worked and what didn’t.

Stories can be over-the-top and cheesy sometimes.

I am READING YOUR MIND! ...yeah.
(photo by Friends of the Library at Amherst College)

That’s the danger of overthinking them. But when done well, stories are really the reason behind my love for magic. Magic may be my main tool, the main way through which I tell my stories (at least live – writing is another major tool), but, in the end, it’s just a tool. Other than a few things here and there, I haven’t really learnt any new magic tricks or sleights since college.

That was four years ago.

Sure, part of that has to do with being a grown-up (grown-upish…) and needing to know what I can and cannot spend on. But part of it has to do with my more recent experiences with street performing, when I returned to my roots as a storyteller.

Writing this post has also returned me to my early days performing magic for my high school English class, when I was able to take a few plastic briefcases filled with magic tricks for kids, and modify them for every vocabulary word my English teacher threw at me. I often pointed to this moment as the time when I started being a magician again. But as cousin after cousin (I have a pretty large family) go through this class, and as each of these cousins tell me that my former English teacher still tells the story of a shy little Asian girl performing a different magic trick with the vocabulary words she came upon each week, I have finally started to realize something: it wasn’t those little tricks performed with those plastic dingy props that stayed in her memory.

It was the stories that they told.

If I could do all that with so few props, what can I do now, knowing what I now know? Magic is sometimes called the art of astonishment, and good magic definitely is that. But magic as an art form for storytelling can be so much more: it can be funny, it can be touching, it can be romantic, sad, and scary. The effect of magic in a story is only limited by the story that you tell. That’s why a magician I know sometimes takes up a southern accent for his show, as he plays a role that adds to the story he performs. That’s why one of my favorite magicians spends his entire show talking about (and finding in random places) Fig Newtons.

And why I like dramatic photos of random objects.
(photo by Ashley Rivera)

So maybe realizing this is the next step in my growth as a magician and performer (something I haven’t done in a long time – grow. I long for the day when I will be 5’5” instead of 5’4”). Being a storyteller isn’t distinct from being magician; in fact, it is the very thing that drives my magic.

The Magic of Labels: turning faceless urban folk into patrons of the arts

The guv'ment labels the money "contributions."

Imagine a giant robot standing in the middle of the street speaking in a monotone robot voice. Hello! Welcome to Chicago! We accept contributions. (That last bit only works if you say it out loud, all robot-like. Try it. Really. And then keep on reading out loud...)

Chapter four dash two four four. Article three. The Municipal Code of Chicago says...
EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EX-TER-MIN-AAAAAAAAAAAATE!!!!

"Acc-ept-ance of con-tri-bu-tions"

...No.

Right. Ok. Fine. You caught me in a lie.

It doesn't quite say that. It just says acceptance of contributions.

But honestly.

It might as well be said in the same robotically monotone yet evilly-tinged voice. Because "contributions" infers social neutrality. It suggests that money everywhere is exactly the same. $5 of your first allowance equals $5 of the grocery money equals $5 of your first paycheck equals a $5 tip for a meal equals the $5 bill you found under the couch.

Money = money = money. Except when it doesn't - when money is a gift or charity or entitlement... when it's earned or stolen or borrowed.

Recognition that money has a social meaning is what motivates some street performers to label their money as "donations." Take, for example, the Tin Man's explanation for his choice of the word donations: "Nobody likes to feel like they're being sold on something. They wanna sell themselves on the idea first. 'Donation helps a cause'" which, he says, implies that a giver's "money means something. People like the power of giving. It's from the heart. All those other words ['tips' and payment'] mean 'You owe me.'"

A group of Chicago-based acrobats similarly tell their audiences,"Show your appreciation with a donation!" Their jokes, as well as the patter of other street performers, try to socially and emotionally involve audience members into their performances. Money is performed to turn mere bystanders into major players... to turn an observing spectator into a patron of the arts.

The Kings of Michigan Avenue (the KOMA Krew) hard at work

It is here, when the experience goes from...

Hm. I had fun. Here's some money for you!
to
My money actually helped create the fun I just had!

that we get the distinctive urban vibe of street theater.