A Busking Bust

Two Stringed Jasmine Jam

Jasmine Not Out Of The Woods Yet

Jasmine, In Tucson

Last night, I was happy to have the new strings put upon the recently repaired Jasmine; whereupon it immediately sounded like a whole new instrument. Before, when I plucked or strummed, the wood would flex under the impact and the note would start off flat and then come back into "pitch."

Now it sounds more like the brand new cheap guitars at Guitar Center, but listeners will have to take my word for it, sort of.

I DID make a recording (above) after I had put just two new strings on the thing. I sort of wanted to look for signs of fatigue at the spot that I had repaired, and if it was already coming undone with just two strings on it; I would be in a pickle.

I composed "Concerto For Two Stringed Guitar" in Cathedral Park, just before the sun went down and before a cop could come and tell me that the park closes "after dark." Near the end, one of the street people can be heard to exclaim "You're playing a guitar with no strings?!?" His implication being that "You ain't cuttin' it with that music, if you can't keep strings on your instrument..."

He seemed almost disappointed when I showed him the rest of the set and told him that I was just experimenting with 2 stringed guitar...

Gabrielle never appeared and Halloween was a busking bust. Most of the few people out were complaining that they expected a lot more people to be out "on Halloween Night."  I could have persisted in trying to play for them, but, there were a lot of street people out, who had forsaken the homeless shelters with high hopes of panhandling up a storm on such a festive evening. 

It made me uncomfortable to be sitting at my spot with as many bums as tourists around, bums who were disgruntled because they weren't "making" anything by bumming. I was more worried about what I might sarcastically say to one of them who came up wanting the seed money in my case because "Someone just gave it to you, so why don't you bless me with some?" And the fight that it might have started...
Still A Little Screwed Up

But, alas, after putting all 6 strings on and discovering that the guitar sounded much better, I noticed one of the little screws which holds one of the tuning machines to be working its way out of the wood, despite my efforts to screw it back in. The hole is "stripped" It is going to require a new, wider or deeper, screw in order to grip the wood.

I can play on it tonight, if I tune down a step and am careful about over tuning that particular string -better to leave it alone and then tune all the other strings to it.

A trip to a hardware store where perhaps I can find a helpful person who could maybe bore out a guide hole, using the drill that is always laying around hardware stores, and then put a fatter screw in there, would have the Jasmine back to "normal," for now...

Looking For Clues In The Universe

Looking at clues in the universe; the signs seem to pointing towards Tucson, Arizona, right now.

The first sign is the weather, which will soon make Tucson like an oasis for a couple of months. And a destination of choice for tourists...I've never busked by a cactus before...

The second is that I know a couple of people there, and they will be visited next month by their daughter from Illinois and HER daughter, whose name is...you guessed it: Jasmine.

Plus the fact that it is in the general direction of California from here, and California is where I think that I will try to put together some semblance of a life, and where Howard will probably get off this roller coaster that we have been riding on since out meeting in New Orleans