The closest, largest local shopping centre is in a low socio-economic area. There, in the air, in people's expressions, contrasted against the glitzy marketing of national chains and the glimmering gemstones of retail jewellery chains, promising love and beauty in exchange for stones and forged metal, there sits a sadness. 

A sadness that is not on the surface. A sadness that is is the hopelessness of their being. They're not at the shopping centre for joy. They're at the shopping centre to fulfil obligations. 

Like reporting to a parole officer, the jobless line up at their *employment services provider*, to get their scheduled lecture about their *resume*, the employers who don't want to *train*, and the *industry courses* on offer, courtesy of a vertically integrated subsidiary that lacks a paper trail, but happens to share a tenancy.

In these faces of sadness, there somewhere, somehow lies passion. 

One man is a skilled welder. But he doesn't have a driver's licence. The woman, a hair dresser, but she's got to drop her kids off, and then pick them up. They want to contribute, they want to *make* a living, but they're *broken goods*.

Broken by a system. Broken by an economy that attributes value to gross domestic product, consumption, and chains of middle men, feeding like parasites. 

Outside, among the shade of an afternoon, there sits a man. He's sitting on the ground. Behind him, a guitar bag, and a shopping cart, filled mostly with what many would describe as rubbish, but that this man would describe as his belongings.

I wonder if there is a guitar inside the guitar bag, but it doesn't matter. 

He sits on the pavers, his buttocks on the ground's lowest point, legs extended out away from his body, a portable keyboard on his thighs. Missing several keys, and having lots of cracked others, the man smiles as he plays various bits of music. The cracked speaker grill works as well as a pristine one, and the places where there aren't keys are still actuated by a press on the flimsy circuit board.


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/holoz0r/23tbMTPzRqzKwfrVLppV4enQVcca9z9MFY1T8KWKuTx7WDGR6SPuQKFQiLzVZ6CXsfYzG.png)
<sub><em>Image [source](https://pixabay.com/photos/piano-rose-yellow-rose-old-piano-1239729/) -  via Pixabay</em></sub>


He smiles, and asks for nothing. He doesn't even ask you to stay and listen, or have a call to action. He's creating for himself. There's an upturned hat with a few dollars in it, and other insignificant coins. 

But he has no story. He is just playing. He finds joy in his improvisations, and I walk past. He keeps playing. Will I ever see this man ever again? 

No. 

Not unless I turn around, and reach into my wallet. I give him $20. We stop and talk.

Now he has a story. 

He speaks of the passion he has for music, the joy he has in playing. The fact that he plays for himself, and for noone else. That he does it to the pass the time, because there is misery in the act of *not* playing. 

I tell him that I am no musician, but that I am an artist in my heart. That I understand his desire to create, the demons that writhe in his mind, that cannot be quieted by meditation, therapy, or substance abuse. 

The only cure is to create. 

To create for yourself to dance like no one is watching. To sing like no one listening. 

When it isn't compatible with economics, creativity is at its finest. The most liberating experience.