It was a beautiful Saturday, and I was doing what I often do when I want to promote my business and rehearse at the same time: I went out busking.
This past Saturday happened to be No Kings Day, so the square was already full of protesters making plenty of noise. Wanting no part of that, I set up as far away from them as I could and started running songs I’m preparing for a corporate event next week. Nothing political. Just music.
I had been there maybe ten or fifteen minutes when one of the protesters decided to bring the protest directly to me.
She walked up in front of me carrying a red-and-white umbrella with “No Kings” and “No ICE” written across the panels and started spinning it right in my face while I was singing. I was not amplified, so I was already having to sing hard just to rise above the noise in the square.
Now, she had every right to protest. But if you interrupt somebody who is minding his own business, you probably should not be surprised when the favor comes back around.
So when she turned and walked away, I switched songs and went straight into “Proud to Be an American.”
She stopped to talk to someone, and I stood right behind her and sang as loudly and proudly as I could. Twice she asked me to stop because she was trying to talk, which was pretty rich considering what she had just done to me.
That was the point where people nearby started filming. You can even hear them in the video saying what was obvious to everybody watching: if she wanted to protest, she should not complain when somebody protested her.
Exactly.
What the video does not show is the rest of the story.
I kept singing until she finally decided it was time to leave, and then I followed her down the sidewalk, around the corner, and farther than I expected, still singing the whole way. By then, people were laughing, looking on, and some were even applauding because they knew exactly what was going on.
When I finally turned around and came back to my spot, I found over $50 in my guitar case. Before all that, I had not made a dime.
And standing there at my guitar case was a young man who told me his wife or girlfriend had filmed part of it. Later, they were kind enough to send me the video.
So yes, the video only shows part of it.
But the lesson is simple:
If you bring your protest into somebody else’s space, do not be surprised when the protest comes back at you in song.