La gente nos llama día a día preguntándonos de dónde sacamos el nombre Jerry Lee Pavement. Qué significa? Qué secreto se esconde detrás de él? Es un simple nombre random, o es un nombre lleno de misterio, ligado a las más grandes conspiraciones de la historia? Ha estado este nombre involucrado en el asesinato de Kennedy o en el ataque al WTC?
La respuesta: no
Este es un fragmento de A Long Way Down de Nick Hornby, libro del cual saqué el apodo JLP. Es un texto relativamente largo pero vale la pena cada palabra. Nuff said!
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Busking isn't so bad. OK, it's bad, but it's not terrible. Well, OK, it's terrible, but it's not... I'll come back and finish that sentence with something both life-affirming and true another time. First day out it felt fucking great, because I hadn't held a guitar in so long, and second day out was pretty good, too, because the rustiness had gone a little, and I could feel stuff coming back, chords and songs and confidence. After that, I guess it felt like busking, and busking felt better than delivering pizzas.
And people do put money on the blanket. I got about ten pounds for playing 'Losing My Religion' to a whole crowd of Spanish kids outside Madame Tussauds, and only a little less from a bunch of Swedes or whatever the next day ('William, It Was Really Nothing', Tate Modern). If I could only kill this one guy, then busking would be the best job I could hope to find. Or at least, it would be the best job that involved playing guitar on a sidewalk, anyway. This guy calls himself Jerry Lee Pavement, and his thing is that he sets up right next to you, and plays exactly the same song as you, but like two bars later. So I start playing 'Losing My Religion', and he starts playing 'Losing My Religion', and I stop, because it sounds terrible, and then he stops, and then everyone laughs, because it's so fucking funny ha ha ha, and so you move to a different spot, and he moves right along with you.
And it doesn't matter what song you play, which I have to admit is kind of impressive. I thought I'd throw him off with 'Skyway' by the Replacements, which I worked simply to piss him off, and which maybe nineteen people in the world know, but he had it down. Oh, and everyone throws their coins at him, because he's the genius, obviously, not me. I took a pop at him once, in Leicester Square, and everyone started booing me, because they all love him.
But I guess everyone has someone at work that they don't get along with. And if you're short on walking metaphors for the stupidity and futility of your working life - and I appreciate that not everyone is - then you have to admit that Jerry Lee Pavement is pretty hard to beat.
The Man Behind the Curtain
- Jerry Lee Pavement
- I'm on antidepressants because a doctor friend of mine thinks I'm miserable. I don't like them they make me hazy. I eat meat, like drugs, and I'm not always faithful to the women I date. Besides that, I'm a selfish, arrogant, clever, funny 22 years old man who has no idea why he is writing in English instead of Spanish. Eventually i'll become a writer, not as good as Dickens and not as successful as Rowling, though.