Street music and a student in Melbourne

Every weekend I would after a long exercise of dilly-dallying at home, finally take the tram into the city. The plan would be to find a cafe and sit down with a coffee and book. But that's the easy part. The hard part, being in Melbourne, is to decide on which cafe to go to. And I usually cannot decide until it's a little too late, almost getting dark, the cafes about to close, and I've been wandering around the streets and laneways for quite a long time. It's not that while I'm drifting on the streets I'm always thinking of which cafe to go. One's mind is constantly assailed by the streetlife of which one is part, like random actors rebelling against a script on a stage wide as a city, directed by no one but traffic lights, travelling vehicles, and in tandem with the oncoming crowd.

There's a spot in the city centre where I particularly like to simply stand, still but purposeful, as if I'm waiting for someone. For one doesn't desire to see or to be a madman in the city, inciting fear or arousing suspicion. It's a very musical spot. First the buskers' violins and guitars come weaving through. Then the assorted instruments on the streets - footsteps, conversations, ruffling in handbags in time for the tram bells to come and go - before finally, if the hour is right, the clock tower above you chimes in and strikes, again and again depending on the time, lifting you lightly in this brief orchestra of Melbourne streets and laneways come alive.

And then a student comes to Melbourne and you play not only amateur tour guide, but also willing tourist all over again. But you shun the touristy paths, for they are not the real city. The secrets to Melbourne are not along grand promenades or in mega-shopping malls - they are between these edifices, in the interstices of concrete and stone, behind chain stores, beneath slants of sunlight. Find an opening gap of a laneway wall-to-wall of spray-paint and graffiti, and Melbourne reveals itself: indie bookshops in a city of literature, quirky cafes in a city of coffee, old record shops in the underground in a city of mazes. In a different universe, in a world of its own, a secret gem to discover.