It´s funny because when I was travelling to the place I usually busk at I saw my reflection in the window´s train and I thought to myself: if I was a painter I guess I´d do a self portrait. 

Be careful with what you wish Jorge because sometimes it can happen. In this case, it wasn´t me who did it but a gentle man instead. His name is Dennis and he was mesmerized by my voice and so he stayed for 3 songs included one of my originals and was even more mesmerized after I finished playing them. He gave me this drawing you see in this post as a present and told me he had had one of the best times in his life experiencing the little metro concert I gave away hahaha. 

Anyways, this event led me to think that I should share more of these little stories as if they are happening, because they are hahaha but also because there is a saying that bad things make a lot of noise and it clouds all the good things that happen in the world, every day at every moment because they are small and not loud enough. Not to get too cheesy because that´s not the point. The point made is that all these little things make life worthy and engaging instead of drowning in the madness fed by the media and sorts and mainly negative people. I am negative sometimes but that doesn´t define a person.

I hope if you read this and have had a bad day you cheer up mother******** hahaha and if not, stay in your misery. We´ve all been there, just punch a wall or go busking or do nothing, it´ll go away

Love you people

Today, the usual spot was taken and even at a late hour. I don´t blame the weather. It´s just the way it is. In any case “the other spot” at the same station was free and, to be honest, I enjoyed playing there. I was in the mood for performing and even if I forgot my harps I didn´t care really. Guitar, voice and a good mood is what a man needs in this case. 

I started with Blackbird followed by While my guitar gently weeps by The Beatles. They are actually a good warm up for the voice and they are also mellow so the general mood settles in after performing songs like that. Then I decided on Stand by me to cheer things up and after thar, all the classics and not so classical ones that I play. It always happens, every time I play I feel this meaningful feeling that I am doing something well, maybe not everything but I am glad I am performing this music and that I am singing. It´s so relieving and necessary for me. Tomorrow I´ll go early in the morning and hopefully I´ll grab a spot for a couple of hours. Sunday bloody sunday hahaha just a joke. I actually appreciate other people playing music but it´s frustrating when the place one is used to is taken.

Anyways, I don´t own the metro.

Regarding the interaction of the day. Nothing too special happened. Just a hint of what I can do better with a song that I perform called Ojalá by Silvio Rodriguez. I respect the song maybe too much so I don´t let myself go with the flow enough so the performance is a bit held back. I realised this,especially, after a man showed me his thumbs up as he liked my performance but then he made a gesture indicating that I should gear up and squeeze the song to make it shine. It´s basically what I did and it felt more genuine and poingnant. I felt better overall after that realisation and I wish to lose a bit of that rigidity in my playing earlier whenever I perform that song again.

I hope you guys understand what I write because sometimes I can tell it´s hard to follow my random “prose” hahaha

Anyways,

Thanks for reading so far

Yours truly,

George of the jungle

Last but not least, I guess I´ll keep some of the stories for myself for some time as I feel I am repeating myself a bit. It´s also good to keep things for yourself sometimes. In this case, I would have gone either way, sharing it or keeping it.

I am talking about the busking session of the day. It´s being a bit hard to get a good spot these days as it is quite rainy and many musicians are playing non stop in the subway. I don´t blame them, I´d do the same thing hahaha but I also know and I am not a morning person so fuck it! I go veeeeeeeery late instead, just when everybody gives up on busking but me hahaha. 

However, I just arrived back home at 1.11 am and I am bit tired but hell yeah it was definitely worth it. I made my living and met nice people by performing live music. It´s a pity people don´t consider it more and many are on their phones non stop. I don´t blame them, we are all guilty of that. Nonetheless, looking on the bright side of things. When I was packing up to go back home, a gorgeous lady came up to me while I was fiddling around with some blues lines on my guitar and somehow it captivated her and so she stopped by and after talking a little bit about guitar she asked me if I could perform an original song for her. I was a bit nervous and ready to pack up completely and leave but no person should miss a chance like that. I guess as musicians, one of our goals or, better said, one of my goals is to connect with myself and with people. I started tuning the guitar to play my song called Rivers which is great for unplugged situations like that but the third string snapped hahahah nooooooo problem she said, Just figure it out, I know you can do it. It was true, I figured it out with one less string and I pulled of a heartfelt performance of my first original song for this project. She said she was gonna give me a donation via bizum and that I should expose my project more to the world with bigger letters and so on for everyone to see. I thanked her for listening to my live performance and for her encouragement.

I must say she also showed me a song on her phone called After dark from the soundtrack of the movie “From Dusk til Dawn” by Quentin Tarantino and it inspired me to watch the movie again and listen to the whole thing.

Just a random thing: One of my favourite movies ever is "After sun" by a scottish filmmaker called Charlotte Wells. It has nothing to do with Tarantino´s movie, it´s just a name coincidence sort of thing but I encourage everybody to watch it if you are into independant movies.

It´s about a relationship in between a father and his young daughter while being on holidays in Spain and it´s so full of symbolism and realness one just have to love it.

Anyways, I guess I´ll write less often but I´ll keep things running in the real life as usual.

Love to everybody

Hi people, today I was a bit low in energy when busking but sometimes one needs to rely on the songs and hope for the best. I wanna mention an specific song´s been with me for many years, especially during the street sets. It´s a song probably written in 15 minutes but it´s more trascendental than most popular music nowadays. 

I feel sometimes quick inspirations like that make the difference. In art, there are not really rules of what works of what doesn´t, it simply does or doesn´t. By the way, I said the song was written in about 15 minutes because the author said it himself in an interview which doesn´t take away the fact that sometimes it´s like that. I believe things are simpler than we think they are or maybe it is that art gets to the point and simplify it for everybody. Kind of as if we knew the answer already. 

Being an artist or, I guess a person that speaks for himself makes my life a bit brighter. In fact, It´s a lovely job that I am doing and I haven´t given up of being a kind of channel for people or just a soundtrack for their lives. I hope you guys enjoy what i do.

The song doesn´t really need to be more known than it is or maybe it needs I don´t know but I´ll mention it again, Its name is blowing in the wind.

I wanna thank Robert Zimmerman for sharing that inspiration with us and make us feel more connected.

P.S I am sure this song paid most of my bills when I lived in Vienna and I was playing it on the streets non stop hahaha

Here it is a live TV performance of the song I really like

I hope you enjoy it too and have good night sleep

Love and all

I realised it´s almost never too late to do my set. I get a nice response from people and, I dare to say, it´s even better during the small hours. I almost lost my chance to go out and play because I was a bit wrecked from a rainy moody day. It´s Spain, I know, but it rains and also people die too. We get sad and depressed at times. Sorry for being so blunt hahaha but I hate stereotipes.

Anyways, shit aside, I enjoyed playing and eventhough I had it going I almost passed on performing one of my original songs, maybe out lack of selfconfidence or, more certainly, I was worn out because it was at the end of my set. However, I remind myself everyday why I do what I do and self-expression came to mind. As not only artists but as people, I believe we need to express ourselves. It´s actually a cure for depression because one stops repressing whenever one expresses one self and it´s even better if there is an understanding on the receiving end and if there is a response from the receiver, even better! 

I don´t get tired from saying that´s what saved my life. I am yearning to share my first original solo album with everybody. It was such an experience to make it and record it and I just can hope it gives something to people, on the receiving end. If it doesn´t, it doesn´t matter completely, as honestly, I had to do it anyways.

Today I remembered one of my deepest influences when making my original solo music. His name was John Martyn, an amazingly creative acoustic guitar player and heartfelt singer. In some ways when I started writing my own music I realised about our similarities. 

When I write, I don´t think that much from where I get the inspiration from but rather expressing one self and enjoying the process, whatever it takes.

Anyways, have a good night and god bless you all (whatever that means)

P.S I hope you guys are taking something out of this that I share online

I leave one of John´s most influencial pieces at least to me

Small hours

Love and peace

Hi,

It´s kind of late to be writing this entry but better late than never. After my street set I had to go to rehearse with some friends in a new musical project we have together and I didn´t have enough time to write this entry before. 

Being that said, who cares? hahaha anyways, today it was a nice busking day but not because of my playing only but also because there were other musicians in the other parts of the station where it seemed to be a more open session with a singer and a guitar player chipping in for a song. It makes me happy to think I am not the only one doing this kind of stuff and how people wherever they come from they get involved in music, especially live music. I hope we don´t lose that as people and people remember that the experience of music is about connecting with one self but also with other people.

I´m gonna keep the interaction for the day blank. I guess there were some nice ones to talk about but I preffer to keep them for myself today.

Have a good night and sleep tight 

Hola people,

People because “gente” sounds too vulgar I´d say. Say what you mean, mean what you say. Nobody cares Jorge!

Enough!

I hope you haven´t given up on reading this already. I must say I have fun writing it but I don´t know if you have fun reading it hahaha. Whatever it is, thank you for keeping up with the reading. I love sharing my stories especially if they are meaningful and you get something out of it. As you can see I am not a writer in the sense of a "motherfucking writer" as Santiuve would say (it´s a hiphop artist from Spain you should check out). I promise I am not drunk when I write these words :).

Anyways, I must say I had fun playing today. I released myself a bit more and I also understood I was playing for people no matter how many seconds of attention span they have or the amount of time they have to listen to me while passing by. It´s a “hard” job with, sometimes no reward from the people you poor your heart out for, As a very good friend of mine said to me when I started doing this episodes/diary/just f******* busking thing. Jorge, the main thing is that you are alright, that you are fine, that you are enjoying yourself, people will feel it so do you. It´s interesting to put oneself out there in such a way. I must say I don´t regret any decision regarding this. It´s totally conscious and the more I do it, the more I understand why I do it. We can all run from ourselves but not really, I understand more about myself through music and I hope, as I said, you guys get something out of my performances and original music.

Regarding the interaction of the day I´d say it was more like a moment when I “grabbed the bull from the balls” and I told myself, fuck let´s do this song “Valiente” by Vetusta Morla on 5 gear and see what happens. People were passing by and thumbing me up, greeting me and enjoying themselves. It´s a song in my mind about being brave, but in a sense that´s tangible and elusive at the same time. We all portray versions of ourselves at times but when it makes a difference it´s when one puts oneself openly acknowledging the bullshit. The less bullshit, the more “me” but there is bullshit to air up. 

I hope it makes sense. If it doesn´t I hope you haven´t denied me forever.

Take care of yourselves and enjoy life

Too short to complicate it (heart shaped emoticon ;))

Today I came earlier than I used to to the spot I normally play on but there was a man playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath, It frustrated me that the spot was taking but oh man, that song. He had an Iron Maiden t-shirt on and the man was genuinely a good electric guitar player. I regret I didn´t talk to him but he was already talking on the phone with a friend so loud all the passage knew was he was up to.

Anyways, in these cases I try to find another spot.  I brought high spirits with me so I decided on taking another 8 stops in line number 5 to get to Acacias station. There is a nice passage in between Embajadores from linea 3 to Acacias and it´s generally a good spot for what I do. However, today I didn´t feel like it and in 40 minutes I made only 3 euros and not much connection with people. Being that said, a middle aged lady came back after listening carefully to my performance and gave me 2 euros out of those 3. One never knows completely but I´d say that wasn´t the place to be.

I decided on trying again at the same place the heavy metal man was playing before and it was free but it was way later. In my experience, unless it´s really close to closing time it´s good to play at Diego de León. My music fits the small hours and people give money and appreciation. I made it to my usual rate and there was a man who gave a couple of coins which is what he had on him and said to me he really loooooooove my cover of Redemption song. It seems to me that he has been passing by a few times before and it wasn´t the first time he´d heard me play that one. As I said, in one of the earlier entries. I am happier because Bob Marley existed. I could only aspire to keep writing music and maybe one day somebody would play a song of mine and make that connection. Call me a dreamer but whatever, it´s late and I am tired. 

As Eddie Van Halen once said: I am telling you, keep playing man, you gotta keep playing. It´s the only thing there is: music man, keep playing, alright? or they are gonna come looking for you if you don´t.

I am all over the place and it´s late as I already said. I am probably not making any sense.

Later and love

If I survived the 27th episode I am sure I´ll live through way more. Today, I beat my own record of the amount of hours busking. It was kind of insane but I had to try it and feel it for myself. It felt like a marathon but I divided into two passes so I could rest in between and recover some energies for the later one. In total I might have played for 5 hours at least making it into a full working day if someone could say that. I feel miserable and proud at the same time but also happy to do it and still see people keep on acknowledge my presence there by greeting me as if they knew me which, in some sense, it´s true as I open myself up out there at most times. However, I sometimes don´t remember the people that wave me but I do remember some of them very well. 

If I had to pick an interaction for the day I´d mention one I had, in fact, twice. There was a man who has given me a coin every time I play “Peces de ciudad” by Joaquin Sabina. He met me during both passes and asked during the second one if I had been playing all those hours in between, I replied I had a long break of 2 hours at least but he was like wtf?. Anyways, that´s one of my favourite songs by Joaquín and that´s why I decided to give it a try during my set. If you hadn´t heard the song and you don´t understand spanish I am sorry but the song is freaking brilliant. Just give it try for yourself, have a listen.

Love and peace

Well, it´s not all “butterflies and flowers” hahaha. Today, I got told off by a metro worker because of the volume I was using when playing. He was right, it was loud and he understood that with less volume people would hear me anywhere around and even better. As with everything else, any progress comes with trials and errors. It´s important that people tell you the good things about you but also the bad ones. Nobody is perfect neither am I. The man actually told me to turn the volume down respectfully. So, I turned the volume down played 3 more songs or so and went home.

On the other side of things, which might be the same side hahaha people were receptive to my music and my singing generally speaking and I did not get any mockery or anything like that. As I usually tell in these stories, people are very appreciative of my playing. At this stage, what encourages me the most is that I see quite some times the same faces of appreciation from the same people and they keep giving me coins and emotional support. The lady giving me dinner, I take it as a trade union right to this point hahaha (joking). Better said, I ain´t taking it for granted. I love when people do things like that. It shows the bright side of humanity in a nutshell. I hope you feel inspired and spread love and understanding wherever you are.

No more “butterflies and flowers” I promise

Love you people