This Is New Orleans

Can You Hear My Guitar?

I Meet Dragonfly
Saturday afternoon, I Walked down Bourbon Street and soon realised what the people were talking about who had said that it is not a good place to play, because all the clubs and bars and restaurants have their own music. All their own music was bleeding together, and an acoustic guitar would be seen but not heard.
On Royal Street, there was a man fashioning flowers and crucifixes and things out of palm fronds, like the one's I had seen in Saint Augustine, Florida.
I asked him if he had ever been to Saint Augustine, and he told me that he had been born there. He told me that he was leaving that spot at 5 p.m., and that I could have it after that. I went to explore for another hour and a half, planning upon returning to take the spot. Flower man said that it was "a good spot."
It was in front of an antique shop which was closed for the summer; not a good omen, I thought.
I arrived at the flower guy's spot at a little past five, opened my case and started tuning up.
A large black man, wearing a white shirt and black pants came up to me and told me that he had been planning upon playing the spot, but that he just had gone to get a soda, which he showed me, as if to back up his claim.
I said "Yeah, I've lost my spot before by just running off for a minute, and coming back to find that someone else grabbed it," I said, hoping that he would get my insinuation that he had lost his spot, and that I hoped the soda was worth it.
I played for a few minutes, in between tunings, and made my first dollar playing in The French Quarter.
Then, I saw someone enter the foyer behind me, out of the corner of my eye, and station himself behind my left shoulder. I figured that it was the large black man, perhaps thinking that I would play for a little while, and then he would want equal time.
I have seen his ilk before.
He was either going to wait a little while and, if I didn't make any tips, tell me that I was wasting the spot. "I would have had at least 10 bucks by now, at least, you're wasting a spot that someone else can make something out of!"
Every time I stopped to re-tune, I expected him to say "You need to be tuned up before you sit down and be ready to go! Why don't you let me play while you go somewhere and tune up!"
Then, he would tell me that the music I was playing was the wrong music at the wrong time and played the wrong way for "these people," whose mindsets he would claim to know intimately, from his having experience playing in The French Quarter. "These people don't want to hear that depressing stuff, that's your problem, right there!"
Finally, after playing about 20 minutes and trying to ignore the presence breathing down my neck, (I was sure that he was putting a voodoo hex on my strings to make them fall flat and probably blowing confusion powder down my neck at the same time) I turned to face him.
What I saw was a woman with red hair and three black spots painted on her forehead. It hadn't been the large black man, after all.
It was Dragonfly, the tarot card reader. I know this is out of sequence, because I already pissed off Dragonfly after the laced drink incident, but that is how I met Dragonfly, and she gave me 5 bucks to have the spot.
I took the 5 bucks, thinking that any spot can be a good spot, unless it is on the moon. The Moon Walk, down by the river is OK, though.
How I Met Sue, The Latina Woman
Then, Saturday night, up walked a latina lady, who was carrying a cat with her, in a cat carrier about the size of a mailbox.
She and I talked about the plight of the homeless. She is tryig to get a job and has not had any success.
She sat by me as I played, and offered me suggestions, such as "Try to get some nice clothes and dress up," and "Play songs that everybody knows."
She meant well, but I had to hold my tongue a couple times. I almost ran her off, telling her "Listen, I've been doing this long enough to have found a little niche, and it isn't dressing up and playing 'Old Time Rock-n-Roll' by Bob Seager. I eventually calmed down, and she eventually moved on.

I saw her later on that night and bought her a beer.
I told her about my excellent spot for sleeping (air conditioned, plush carpet) and thought that I would show her to it, but she wanted to go to her own spot, which is kind of in the same neighborhood. She has been attacked by crazies before, after being invited to their places. She is about 4 ft. 10 inches tall and weighs about 95 pounds. She is Cuban (I think) and is probably older than me. She doesn't talk much about her past.
I ran into her the next morning and she bought me a yogurt with blueberries and granola type thing at the Tulane Medical cafeteria. Someone had laid 6 dollars on top of her pocketbook, as she was sleeping on a bench outside the casino. She spent $2.80 of it on me.
Sue said that she has some stuff in a storage box in some other state. It is only 40 bucks per month, but she is about to fall behind two months and is in danger of losing what little she has. I was hoping for a substantial tip when I played that night, so I could help her pay her fee.
Admittedly, I would have to have someone drop "a couple bills" on me, in order to be able to afford it, but, when you're playing Bob Seger, er, Grateful Dead songs to drunken gay guys (see below), you never know...
This morning, we met at the same spot at 7 p.m. (on the nose) and went in quest of clothing. Sue (as that is her name) thought that they were giving out clothing at a place all the way across the French Quarter, and so we bent our steps that way.
We stopped and got drinks at a convenience store half way there. A bird promptly dropped a turd from high above us. It landed in Sue's drink. Only a bit of it hit the top of the can, which was lucky for her as it alerted her to what had happened.
"What are the odds of a bird landing it's crap right through the little hole in the top of a soda can?," asked Sue.
"This is New Orleans," was all I could muster as a reply.
The place where we went at 8:30 didn't open for another 5 hours. She decided to wait, while I walked back to the west side of the quarter, where I met a man who was waiting at a bus stop. He asked me about music, told me that he grew up in New Orleans but was disappointed upon returning to find it what it is.
He gave me two dollars and suggested that I go to a place up the street called "Covenant House," where they used to give out clothing to the poor ("...but that was 20 years ago...").
I was told by the lady at the front desk that Covenant House was now only for homeless youths, aged 16 to 21, and that they stopped giving out clothing about 6 years ago.
I guess I managed to charm her out of the 2 tee shirts that she gave me, probably by mentioning that I had to wash the one I was wearing twice daily in the fountain outside of Capital Bank. Some people go there looking for venture capital to start a business; some to wash their shirt in the fountain out front -we all have different "banking needs."

Photographer
John Barrett

Last night (Monday), I made a measly 5 dollars, and it was not from playing music; it was after chatting with a couple, who had set up photo equipment and were waiting for the sun to dip to the horizon, in order to capture the effects of the smoke of a huge forest fire which is raging in East New Orleans. They were thinking that it would make for interesting colors. I will go to the website that they gave me (along with the 5 bucks, although I made it clear that I didn't want them to think that I had talked to them for a half hour as a pitch for money).
That about catches things up. It is Tuesday.
Southern Decadence Festival 2011

You're going to have to do better than
just playing "Karma Chameleon" over and over...

Things have been slow, everyone admits it. Another musician apologized to me for being rude "the other night," claiming that he was very upset over not having made more than two dollars and he wasn't in any mood to talk. It's a good thing he wasn't, for if I talked I may have been equally rude from being upset over not having made more than two dollars.
But, there is good(?) news. At least there is hope.
The Southern Decadence Festival is coming this weekend!!
They (we) (I) are expecting more than 100 thousand homosexual men to invade the east end of the French Quarter, which is already a gay stronghold. 100 thousand gays, all in one place. Where is your suitcase bomb when you need it...D' oh!! (just kidding, of course)
But, I am hoping that by playing Elton John, David Bowie and maybe throwing a little Barry in there (Mannilow), I should be able to make some money and have a gay ol' time.