Street Life – Bremen, June 2024
It is mid-afternoon. The sun has travelled across much of the sky and is now illuminating the arches, the colonnade in front of the Town Hall in Bremen. Tourists cross the cobble-stoned space between the houses of politics, of business and commerce, swinging their arms up to point at the majesty of the Bremen Dom, dodging the red and white trams, snapping photographs on their mobile devices, or posing while others capture their image in front of the grimy facades. Mingling in with the noise of voices, of glasses and plates being cleared or served at one of the open air restaurants, are strains of music. A pan flute player with guitar to one side, a clarinet player near the main entrance to a store, and a single man with his self-made strings and an amplifier on the stone seats under the arches. He doesn’t look as if this is playing for pleasure, as he sets up the small helper, with a rucksack laid out on the pavement before him, in the hope of a few euros as reward for his efforts. His face shows this is not so much for pleasure, more as a means to survive.
Others come here for pleasure, for relaxation amid the noise of vehicles, people, animals. As the musician begins to tune his instrument another sketches the view in front of him. A paper cup with water for his brush, a small wooden container for watercolours, he concentrates on the image created on paper. The rucksack he carried to this seat earlier is laid down next to his feet, close by, he has no need of donations for his arts. Tomorrow he will be somewhere else, capturing, painstakingly, a different view of the world in front of him. The musician begins to play.
Where others play the same tune over and over again, trusting that the flow of people passing them by will have moved enough no one will notice, this musician sits and plays as the feeling comes to him. There are no recognisable tunes plucked by his fingers, no repetitions, nothing to sing or swing along to. He loses himself in the sounds, and only looks up when someone throws a coin into the otherwise empty depths of his rucksack, or when a fellow traveller comes his way to greet him, hold a short conversation, exchange a cigarette. Then he pauses, takes a drink from his water bottle, squints up against the strong sunlight. Across the market place someone plays the pan flute, another the clarinet, another a guitar. Under the arches, his rucksack spread out in hopes of a few euro, this street musician plays a specially adapted electric shovel.
