Emilia Brock, CAS senior, supported herself this summer by getting a part time job. What’s so cool about that? Well, she was in Finland on a whim, her job title is a synonym for street performer, and she got tipped in “booze and food.” Over the course of the summer Emilia kept a blog, met a couchsurfer and a millionaire, appeared in a Finnish newspaper, and wrote countless poems and short stories for appreciative customers. She says busking is one of the best things that has ever happened to her, and was kind enough to sit down with me in Tompkins Square Park to talk about it.

Vanessa: Did you know you were going to Finland to busk?

Emilia: Well no, I planned to go to Finland and find a job. I didn’t get to do as much writing during the school year as I wanted to, so I brought my typewriter to Finland hoping I’d get some crap job and then use my free time to write. But then I couldn’t find a job so I had to make a good decision.

Vanessa: Why Finland?

Emilia: I didn’t want to stay in New York for the summer because I didn’t have enough money and I was thinking, if I’m going to be paying rent and living on my own, it might be nice to do it in Finland. And I’m half Finnish, so that helps. I didn’t really want to go live at home with my parents for the summer so I just kind of picked up and moved there in hopes that I would… get a job (laughs).

Vanessa: Explain a little bit about what exactly you were doing. My roommate asked me what busking is, so let’s go from there.

Emilia: Busking is a British term. It basically means a street performer, but I prefer busking to street performer because street performer could make me sound a lot more pathetic than I hope I was. Basically I would take my typewriter out to the streets and write poems and stories for people for “donations” on the street. I usually did it in front of one restaurant.

Vanessa: How did you go from jobless to busker?

Emilia: Well, I’d been searching for jobs for about 2 weeks and I couldn’t find anything. I was basically sitting alone in my apartment, drinking beer and realizing, I’m not getting out of my apartment so what’s the point of living in Finland? I’m not making any money, and I’m not getting any writing done because I was so worried about getting a job. So I basically hit three birds with one stone by getting out, and writing, and making some money. I went out one day, called the owner of the restaurant and asked him if he would mind and he said he didn’t care, and so it just…worked. I made some money, and people started getting really into it, so I kept doing it.

Vanessa: I guess there wasn’t really such a thing as a “typical day”, but try to tell us what a day might look like.

Emilia: Well usually I’d wake up in the morning and then since I didn’t have Internet I’d go to some Internet Café, and then I’d grab my typewriter, go to the restaurant, and I would sit on the ground right outside. They had a terrace and so I would sit outside in front of the door and the people on the terrace could hear my typewriter. I had a sign that I made out of a Cheerio’s box. I would never be like, “Hey, do you want a story?” I’d always just sit there and have something in mind that I wanted to write because then the ding, and the typing, would get people’s attention. Then usually somebody would be curious enough to come get one.

Vanessa: That’s really interesting that the typewriter played an actual role in the process. If it were a laptop it wouldn’t have been the same thing…

Emilia: Exactly. Yeah, that was basically the biggest part of it, because I think if I were writing them by hand then it wouldn’t have been as much of a spectacle, and everyone knows that good street performers cause a spectacle. So the noises, and the fact that I was sitting on the ground with this little sign and everything, I think that kind of just caught people’s attention while they were having a beer outside.

Vanessa: So how did the actual process of writing work?

Emilia: That’s part of the reason why I did it at a restaurant, because then people could ask me for a poem and sit down and have lunch or have a beer or something like that, while I was writing, so it’s not like they were waiting impatiently for me. Most of the time it would only take me about 10 minutes to write a story or a poem. These aren’t Nobel Peace Prize winning pieces of literature or anything like that.

Vanessa: Did you ever get writer’s block?

Emilia: Well, I mean, on occasion, but it would only last a few minutes because I knew I had to do it. So there are some [poems] that are just absolute crap and I know that, and I’m sitting there selling it to them, thinking, “Oh my god this is the worst poem I’ve ever written in my life,” but they liked it, and that’s fine.

I mean the poetry I was writing was really, really, cheesy, you know, rhyming couplets most of the time. I’m not ever going to claim to be a good poet…my stories I’m a little bit more proud of. But that’s what people in Finland were really liking because not only do they not normally write in English, but it is kind of kitschy on it’s own.

Vanessa: What was the standard donation for stories and poems?

Emilia: My suggested donation was 3 euros, because I didn’t want to charge too much, since they don’t know how good of a writer I am. So my base was 3 euros but most people gave me more than that, just on a tip basis. Some people would tip 5, some people gave me 10. So some days I’d make really good money and some days I wouldn’t.

Vanessa: I read on your blog that some people tipped you in champagne! Did you get any other interesting tips?

Emilia: I got tipped in booze and food mostly, if it wasn’t money. Then there was this one Finnish millionaire who tipped me [a lot of money], and I didn’t know he was a millionaire at first, he just gave me all this money, and then I later found out he was a millionaire and that’s why he could just tip me that much!

Vanessa: When you say you “later found out,” does that mean you kept in touch with some of your customers?

Emilia: Yeah, definitely. One of my first customers, she loved it so much she’d come back every other week for a poem. Now she and I are friends on Facebook, and she’s this really awesome 60 year old woman, and she throws these parties in Finland that are 50 and up only, so if you’re under 50 you can’t get in.

And then another guy, who was also a customer of mine from the first day, he ended up contacting the newspaper, so that was the reason why there was a newspaper article about me. So a lot of these people actually turned into friends.

Vanessa: So the restaurant didn’t really “get it” at first. Were there any negative reactions other than that? I feel like in New York you might get in trouble with the police or something for not having a permit?

Emilia: No I mean, I asked the restaurant owner if I could sit there, and he was like, “Yeah,” since I was sitting outside the restaurant technically it’s not his property. So he was like “Yeah, it’s not my property,” and I was like, “I know I just don’t wanna piss you off.” Everyone at the restaurant was really good to me: they would give me a free meal here and there, they’d give me a discount if I ordered food. I remember one day I just literally sat down and they brought out a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream for me. If it was cold they brought out a blanket for me, I could always run in and use the bathroom if I needed to. That’s why it was really perfect to do it there, because I had everything I needed.

Vanessa: Do you have any advice for someone who would want to do something unconventional for next summer, or maybe even right now? I feel like many NYU students get bogged down with the idea that they need to get a job in New York, or an internship. Do you have anything you would say to that?

Emilia: My advice is that you should just try and think out of the box, especially in this job market. Everyone at NYU gets internships, everyone has good shit on their resume. But, I put busking on my resume, and in the last 2 interviews I’ve had they’ve asked about it. Right now, it’s better to have something that stands out, I think, more than just having your average internship.

Vanessa: You said you probably won’t be able to busk now that you’re back in New York. Would you have wanted to?

Emilia: I just think New Yorkers have already seen everything, so they’d be a little bit more jaded to seeing a girl with a typewriter on the street. You know, they’d be like, “Oh, what a hipster,” or “Oh my God, she’s charging $3, that’s such a rip off,” or some shit like that. So I just don’t think it would work as well. I’ve contemplated doing it, but my typewriter actually just broke recently, so now I’ve gotta get it fixed before I do anything with it anyway!