Natural Inclinations
There's a woman who sometimes plays guitar on Shattuck, about a block down from the Wells Fargo bank. I've only her there on the weekends. She sets up in the doorway of some office front. She's on an acoustic guitar with one of those pickups you mount behind in the strings, runs it into a PA amp. The amp peppers her guitar with just a little distortion, it's a warm fuzz down by the machinehead, higher up on the neck, it'll shriek.
It sounds good.
She plays slide. None of that "Women can shred the blues, too," bullshit, either. She's actually *good.* The woman can ornament her riffs, well enough, so she's much better than she lets on. Most of what I've heard from her boils down to straight ahead boogies. Real stompers, too. None of that Johnny Winter crap. I've never heard her solo, thank Christ.
And she keeps it all at a walking pace. A good, swift walking pace.
She doesn't shy away from the low strings either; she fingerpicks, her basslines are solid. You could set a book on them.
I can't tell how old she is. Older than me, I guess. Her playing is confident, not that that means much, other than she's been at it for awhile. You can tell she smokes cigarettes, but her skin is still pretty tight. Her hair is really long. She's a blonde. It's got a few waves to it, you can't see any white in it. She wears these really loose dresses. Not the kind you'd expect her to put on for work. I think she's got a wardrobe set aside for her gigs. Floral prints. . . pink and orange and red. Her guitar's got a maple top, so with that, her clothes, and her hair, she's as pretty as a picture.
So I was walking by this woman, and the pedestrians were out in full force. The moneyed ones. There was a woman and her daughter to my right, heading the same way, up toward University. The mother kept her eyes forward. Her legs were long and firm, she was wearing a skirt cut below the knee. Dark hosiery. She was dressed like a mother who wishes she really had it in her to dress like she did before she was a mother.
The daughter was well dressed, too. But unlike her mother, whose legs moved like scissors, this child had bounce. Her head bobbed from side to side, she skipped. Pink tennis shoes. White corduroys. She dances. Her mother moves like an automaton set to "Bitchy."
"Mommy," she said. "Mommy, I want to give that girl money."
The mother kept moving. Her daughter knew the custom, somehow. She knew the thing to do was give the musician money and she knew they had money to give. Moreover, she referred to this woman as a "girl," not a "lady," nor "woman," but a "girl." She identified with that woman, somehow. She saw herself, standing there, playing guitar.
"Mommy," she said, again. "Mommy, I want to give that girl money."
Her mother didn't slow down, either time. But after the little girl repeated herself, the mother began speaking in French, without moving her head. She had on sunglasses. It was about seven thirty in the evening.