Bluesette In My Head

Big Source Of Stress

Barnabys Condo

I am sitting with a pile of stuff at the library; it is already a quarter past 3.

Last night, I played at the Bourbon Street spot until shortly after 8 p.m. when a random heavyset black girl in her early twenties approached and said "Esscuse me, but it's after 8 o' clock and your not supposed to be playing music. I live here." informing me of the curfew which had previously only been mentioned by the police.

I can't imagine that I was bothering her in her house; because, she walked off quite a distance to wherever it was. But people are strange, sometimes; a loud and constant noise like a nearby club; they can block out; but the tiny far away sound of someone playing an acoustic guitar can get under their skin; especially if they develop a paranoia that the person is TRYING to bother them...

I was pretty pissed off and almost yelled "I didn't think they had Section 8 on Bourbon Street!" or some other insult..

It seemed like she was just trying to wield power in any way possible; or that the whole purpose of the encounter was so that she could tell me that she lived where condos can go for up to $2,500 per month.

I couldn't think of a good positive reason for her to have done that; and now, I have to worry about playing there late at night; after the cops have done their ride through; but maybe not before she is asleep.

I just hope she is "living there" short-term.
Dividing Time

I have the Perl Programming guide, which I am using to write a program which will automatically format my text files into what you see on the blog (i.e. the first 3 words of a paragraph larger and in a different font; and different coloured paragraphs).

All the program will do is: 

• Read the text file; one line at a time; 
• and then break each line into an array of words; 
• and then insert the HTML tags before and after the first three words
• and generate random colours for each paragraph, which don't repeat; and which are light enough to show up against my dark background

I should have the thing done pretty soon, however, not really soon, because of my schedule.

This morning, I woke up and noticed that the temperature was warm enough for me to actually sit there and do some things without having to have my blankets wrapped around me.

I:

• Drank an energy drink
• Used the nearby porto-let
• Shook out my sleeping bag and found the dollar which fell out of my pocket during the night
• Warmed up with some scales and broken chord exercises.
• Put all my stuff up in the trees
• Went to the terminal and plugged in this laptop to charge
• Loaded "Bluesette," by Toots Theileman into the Audacity window and changed its pitch (and key) down one step to "A," then slowed it down 40%, in order to better hear what Hal Leonard played as his illustrative solo.
• Tried to fit a vocal melody over a chordal riff which I came up with, tentatively entitled: "She Comes From A Place Where All The Girls Are Pretty."
• Came across the river to the library; after having another energy drink.
• Ripped a Clay Aiken CD; and a Beatles CD onto my hard drive.
• Studied Cyclical Quadruplets, out of "Comprehensive Technique For Jazz Musicians"
• Started this blog post

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

I still need to:

• Get an online manual for my "image manipulation" program (which is the Linus version of like Photoshop) so I can once again create pictures to put on this blog like the one of myself and Tanya Huang (right)
• Study the Audacity manual which I downloaded, and which already has me making better sounding recordings
• Go on some forum and ask anybody there how I can link the mp3 codex to the Audacity Program; so I can, once again post music...
• Write out some exercises to practice tomorrow morning
• Work on my Master List of every song that I know; so as not to forget that I know them

And this is not to mention getting my laundry done; buying some more socks; getting a hot shower etc., getting food and eating it...

The only reading I do is on the 5 minute ferry ride each way; at this rate, I should finish "Les Miserables" around the 4th of July...

I may start to post a "Week In Review," once a week on this blog; to free up the 1 or 2 hours daily, which I spend blogging.

(1 Hour And 2 Minutes spent on this post...)