Sunday, October 18, 2015

50 Dollar Saturday

I arrived into the Quarter at around 8 PM, after having walked there.
I had woken up with $2.65 on my coffee table after having done the unthinkable, in taking Friday night off from busking. The 3rd night off in a row.

I had drank wine and recorded music all day Friday and wound up feeling paranoid and insecure after smoking some bud.

After the day of drinking had turned into the night of lethargy and slow motion; I sat there, paralyzed and daydreaming and vacillating between going out or not; until I succumbed to an early bedtime and a promise to myself to get a fresh start the next day. The "alcoholics promise."

As the clock ticked I, at some point, convinced myself that it was too late to go out and busk, even though I could have been there by 11:30 PM, and played through the most lucrative time slot at the Lilly Pad.

That logic didn't make sense, but I was pretty much "out of it," and subconsciously arranging things so that I would wake up without any money for alcohol nor weed. Their ambition killing effect is not helping me at all.

I had taken Wednesday and Thursday nights off, also.

Tuesday, the day after my birthday, a check of the mailbox that I have recently been issued revealed a card from my mom, along with well wishes and a 20 dollar bill.

Amped Up 

Getting to the Quarter with 24 dollars on me, I ran into Tim Todd the violinist who is renting my amp and who threw another 10 dollars to me.

I hope to have the amp up and running by Mardi Gras, with microphone, mic stand, cable  and some kind of little pull cart to tote the stuff.

I'll have to get a good set of rechargeable batteries.

And I will most likely take the trolley into town each night that I use it; more of "the cost of doing business."

Tim seems to have no qualms about paying 5 bucks per night for the thing.

We have settled upon the terms of basically about 15 bucks per week; as I decided to charge him only on the nights that he actually uses the thing -for "wear and tear." If it is just sitting in his apartment (instead of mine) then I don't charge him. It's a gentleman's agreement.

That works out well, because he gets to maintain possession of it, meaning that I am not forced to cough up half of the 5 dollars each night to transport it on the trolley; and am not put in the position of having to find him to deliver it to him.

He moves around, due to the availability of playing spots and will send his girlfriend as a scout to return with information such as "Tanya and Dorise just left to go play a wedding, their spot is open; I'll go hold it."

I could easily wind up chasing him around, carrying the thing, along with my other stuff, up and down Royal Street, just to unburden myself of it.

Tim uses the amp in tandem with an identical one that he owns; just so he can run in stereo.

That seems like a lot of expense just to widen the sound and make the echoes and reverberations bounce around from left to right, something which is lost on a lot of listeners; but Tim is trying to take his game to the Tanya and Dorise level, and they are in full blown, surround sound stereo in perfect equalization (having had professional sound engineers by trade happen along to hear them and to make suggestions in how to mix their sound) and now there is no drop off in sound quality for people just leaving T and D, and then encountering him.
Plus, the violin is one of those instruments that you can busk with for a long session; and Tim has gone 8 hours before (when he needed 500 dollars that day).
But the amp really pays for itself, I think, through the fact that Tim plays better when he is manning the stereo rig with his sound bouncing around left to right; putting more energy into his playing and reaping rewards that way.
Last night, I made 50 bucks while playing moderately intoxicated on just a half pint of whiskey.

16 comments:

  1. I'm looking for more information on your former girlfriend, Karrie Porras. More importantly I would like to hear the stories she told you about her kids.

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  2. I think I have figured it out. I was born and raised to be an artist, as purpose-built as that guy superman fought in that last movie.

    But I think I honestly love your art for the same reason the national badminton team used to rope us in to play them, we who didn't know shit about badminton. We would do things a skilled badminton player would never think to do. It was good training for the team, and it was their coach who came up with idea.

    It was fun!

    I should mention that badminton is a very serious thing, more than tennis, in places outside the USA.

    Anyway, the parallel is that you do things that I, as a skilled and trained artist, would never think to do. And it's great and refreshing!

    And you have helped me understand why I was fascinated by my youngest sisters art when I was a kid. It always puzzled the hell out of me because she had if anything under average talent. Now I understand.

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  3. anonymous; Karrie had 4 kids, all girls, spaced basically 2 years apart in ages; and, when I get around to updating her "bio" section, I might include the horror stories about them; first I have to know that you are not any of the family members who are out to do her and them harm; about which she also talked, so "anonymous" raises a red flag...

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  4. I will not be giving away my name because i am one of her biological children. I hope you can respect that. I have a family to protect. I came across your blog when I googled her name. All I have from her is a letter saying I could find her when I turn 21.I was adopted young and have never looked back until recently. I have no interest in my biological family, just Karrie. I was just curious in the things she use to speak about her kids and if she loved them.

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  5. Also, what exactly do you mean by horror stories? All I'm really looking for is answers and you're the closest thing I've come close too.

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  6. Anon - if you were on the level you'd work through the homeless service center there in new Orleans. They have a phone, you know.

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  7. I'm not even sure if I can handle having a conversation with her just yet. It takes time to become accustomed to the whole thing. I'm just trying to hear what he has to say first and then I'll go from there. I'm nowhere near New Orleans either. F

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  8. I think Karrie said that her kids would have been 16, 14, 10 and 7 in age, at the time we were together; in 2009-2010; if that fits; and the horror stories were mostly about the way they were taken away from her. That would make you the one that just turned 21, perhaps...
    From the way she told me their names, it sounded like they were very dear to her...

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  9. I know it sounds weird and suspicious with me being anonymous. I just don't want my name out there. I've gone to great lengths to protect myself and family from Karrie's family. All I know is what I read in the case file. I have no memory of her. I'm not sure if it was too traumatic or I was too young. Do you mind telling me some things?

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  10. I will post more soon, perhaps put it in the "bio" section;
    You can always go back to 2009 and read a lot about her (in fact my mom said she read my blog every morning but that it was all about Karrie)I think I can find Karrie at the library one of these days or find out where her apartment is; we both got apartments through Unity (housing for the homeless) but hers is in a different building...
    Something happened to her in the last 3 years since I saw her; she has shaved her head and quit drinking; she used to have to have a fifth of liquor every day...I'll try to get the stories right from her before I post from memory....I can't even remember your names; but I think they were all 3 syllables, like Alexis, Felicia, Marielle, kind of Latina sounding as I recall...but I think she put you up for adoption for your own safety against her family-isn't her biological dad getting paroled on his murder charge soon?

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  11. I read all your post.. Trust me once I found a connection I looked around and found things about her.. Like her morning babbles. I would love to maybe write a letter to her. I'm kind of nervous about the whole thing. I hate that something may have happened to her. And I have no idea who her bio dad is and if he was in jail and much less from murder. Who did he kill and why? I had a brief contact with Stephanie, but I caught her in a bunch of lies and told her to leave me alone. I've even contacted the police where I live on how to protect myself and my family. They don't quite know what the truth was if it was to hit them in the face.

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  12. I would love to read more as always. Like I said I would love to write letters too her one day soon.

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  13. I am her sister Stephanie that u mentioned, one thing I didn’t lie, 2nd I’ve never tried to hurt u or your family or even tried to contact you, so leave my name out of it cause you don’t know, plus our bio dad killed no one, our dad left us when we was young, we never had a step-father growing up, Karrie has a hard time with reality, believe me or not I don’t care, leave my name out of stuff that you don’t know about, yes people gona lie to you so you won’t have nothing to do with us, oh well your choice and I have never tried to hurt no one, seems to me your the lier, like I said leave me out of it

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  14. I guess this is the Karrie Central blog post...
    A lady named Faith Carillo (I think it was) contacted me and told me that Karrie was in Chattanooga, Tennessee and that she was with a guy named Mark who had started treating Karrie well, but had started abusing her.
    I thought about going there to rescue her.
    But, Faith never wrote back again, and it just dawned on me that Karrie must have told her that she didn't want to see me again.
    When we were in Jacksonville and had a beautiful hidden campsite where we were "homeless" but living in style, I had to get out of there because St. Augustine had so many warrants on me for stuff designed to run the homeless people out of town (or they face like 6 months in jail if they can't pay the 100 dollar fines, for peeing outside, or trespassing)I told Karrie that I was getting a bus ticket for Mobile, Alabama.
    I said that it was up to her if she wanted to come with me; she had 2 weeks to come up with the 69 bucks for the bus ticket.
    The next day a lady gave her a hundred bucks outside a CVS, and she went and got a gallon of vodka and spent 3 days laying in the tent and drinking.
    She never got the bus ticket; she wasn't sure what she wanted, I guess.
    I fell asleep on the bus and woke up somewhere in west Florida and looked at the empty seat next to me and cried...
    I felt like I was leaving behind the only thing that mattered.
    But, when I saw her in New Orleans, she was distant...that's where it stands now;
    I remember Karrie talking about a grandfather who she caught watching porn with one of her daughter's on his lap...
    And she said that her mother caught her using her perfume and punished her by smearing sardine oil all over her and making her go to school that way...
    And she said that she owned a house but that her family had taken it over and kicked her out of it...
    I don't know how much is her imagination; she said that the Jacksonville Beach police beat her up and she laid under a little bridge for 2 weeks and that spiders attacked her...she had a lot of stories but she had the scars to prove them, like a couple gashes on her head where her hair wouldn't grow from being hit with a 2 by 4 by someone...
    Just mentioning these things in case they ring a bell....

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  15. No she doesn’t own a house and no our grandfather did t do that to her child, and no my mom didn’t do the perfume thing, bless her heart, she delusional, I don’t know why she’s like this now she use to not be this way I think maybe she gave up on life, yea my mom told me she was living Chattanooga and now she gets an ISS check, and last we know she is still with that guy,, I don’t know about the other stuff is true or not,but her child hood and us growing up until she was in her 20s I can tell you about, she wasn’t abused when we was growing up, we was so poor we never went anywhere just school and home that’s it, we was always together, I do miss her but my mom said she’s hard to talk to cause she doesn’t know reality and she has a wild imgantion

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