Guitar Man

Most days, guitar man stands at the corner of the Merchandise Mart, right on Wells by the river. He’s an older black man with a beat-up acoustic guitar, greying dreadlocks, and occassionally talks to folks that walk by. Most of the time, he’s just standing out there: not begging for money, just standing there… waiting for… something. I often want to take a picture of him, not out of spite, but because he makes for an intriguing photograph. But each time I even think about it, I shy away – I don’t like the idea of taking his photo because I would, really, be taking it to show you all. I’d be taking his photo in a "look how weird and odd this man is" sort of way, and that just doesn’t feel right.

I’ve take pictures with the wrong intentions before, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. But for the time being, I don’t think you’ll be seeing Guitar Man on the blog.

The other day, I noticed he had a new guitar. Before, he had this beat-up black guitar that seemed to be missing an awful lot of strings. I wasn’t even sure if the damn thing was playable. This new one actually looks like it might work, and when I noticed it… I stopped, turned around, and walked up to him.

"You have a new guitar," I told him (as if he didn’t know this).

He explained that he had just bought it, and seemed geuinely proud of it. He then asked me for change. :|

I gave him a buck and, to my surprise, he gave me one of his "tapes."

Both Justin and Matt (my coworkers) have also received tapes from him, as they too have also stopped to chat and talk with the guy. According to Justin, his tape just had what sounded like other peoples’ songs recorded in it; according to Matt (who’s received several tapes), a few of the songs has what sounds like someone playing guitar, but really faintly in the background.

I have yet to listen to mine.

There’s something about him – about the fact that he’s out there, in the exact same spot, every single day. I wish I knew what he was waiting for; I wish I knew how to help him; I wish I had a fraction of his faith.

Today, as I walked by, he was pointing at the skyscrapers across the river and yelling. He was accusing someone of being a murderer, and a lot of "white man" this, "black man" that. He seemed genuinely angry, but not necessarily uncontrollably angry.

As I walked by, I started to wonder if he was truly crazy, or if he was "performing" in some way. I started to think about actors, and how we have a group of people who assume different personalities and different realities, professionally. Given particular mediums (the stage, a book, television), we are given clues that let us know when we are deliberately entering into an artificial world/reality.

Is Guitar Man crazy? Most likely. But hearing him angry and ranting, he made me seriously think about what I take as "real." When contextual cues are removed, I realized just how hard it is to differentiate between delusion and performance. Since he’s just some guy standing on a street corner, yelling at the sky… most people would automatically label him as insane. But if he were ripping off his clothes, yelling at the sky, standing on a stage pretending to be King Lear… how thin a line that is.