* * Meet Dr. Moon, busker

Chances are if you’ve frequented public spaces in the Blacksburg/Christiansburg area in recent years, you’ve been busked. And the busker, someone who plays music on sidewalks, street corners, and parking lots, has likely been Chris Saunders, AKA “Dr. Moon.”

Chris is a striking figure as he sings, standing with his guitar on the sidewalk, his guitar case open on the concrete in front of him, sprinkled with coins and dollar bills. He’s tall, razor thin, with pale blue eyes and an angular face framed by a long white beard and a white pony-tail down his back. If you took off his ubiquitous multi-colored rainbow hat and gave him a white robe and a staff, he’d look like Moses, ready to lead his people to the Promised Land.

We had much more in common than I realized when we got together the other day to discuss his unusual occupation.

“I was born and raised in Christiansburg,” he told me, in the adjacent neighborhood to mine. His father was in the printing business, as was mine. They worked together for a time.

“I worked in theater in High School and I was in the choir at school and in my church.” He was strongly influenced by the benevolent and pacifistic nature of his Brethren Church. “Brethrens practice foot washing. It’s a lovely old tradition, linked back to Christ, washing his disciples’ feet. It’s an act of humility and service to one another.”

He worked a series of jobs after graduation, in the police department, in the old overall factory, in a nursing home, in retail, and in dining services at Virginia Tech. He worked in the church doing disaster relief.

“We are all brethren,” he said. “We are all brothers and sisters. We all have a commitment to each other and to the greater good. Music has always been part of my life. My mother was instrumental in teaching me to play the guitar. She still plays the harmonica; sometimes we play the streets together.”

Eventually he became self-employed as a candle maker, picture framer, incense maker and musician. At age 50, he enrolled at Radford University and in 2012 he got a performance art degree. “I graduated in May and in June I started street performance. A ‘busker’ is from the Spanish word buscar meaning to seek. A busker is seeking his fortune. Street performance is now what I do. It’s my income. My wife performs tableau vivant, which means a living statue. I think we’re the only buskers in the area. My noms de plume is ‘Dr. Moon,’ came from my candle company, called Waxing Moon Candles. People called me ‘Moon’ from that.

“People should be able to openly express their gifts and talents with each other, to display our art or sing our songs publicly with the community. It is vital to the world that we reach out to each other in a loving, kind way. The arts and art and music spread that kind of joy. We need to open up to each other, to encourage each other to pursue something that never felt comfortable pursuing.

“It’s a job. I go out every day, at least twice per day. I really give it up to the universe. There is no way I can know that you will be walking that sidewalk, that you’ll have money, and that you’ll be generous that moment when I’m singing. It can’t be pre-planned. I have to trust that I’m being used as a tool of the universe and the universe will put me where I need to be.

“You only have so much time in life. You only have so much opportunity to make a difference. I knew my strong point was performance. That was my gift to give, that moment of pleasure and enjoyment to someone passing by.”

We talked at length about the rules street performers face in the towns, rules he’s working to change to increase viability.

“Nobody should need to prove their validity. It’s inhibiting. It’s hard to say what talent we have in the community. If given the opportunity, people would come forward. I encourage other people to come out. I want to have competition. I’d like to have a busker on every corner in our towns. And between them, I’d like to see poets and artists and writers. I would like to see you have a soap-box and you could stand on it and read passages from your new book, with your books for sale.

“When I’m busking, I play for free. I might play for an hour and get nothing (in tips). There is a prominent businessperson who stopped to listen. I was playing ‘You are my Sunshine,” and he gave me $20.00 because his mother used to sing it to him to sleep. Art is about the value to the person.”