Have You Shared A Harmonica In The Past 24 Hours?

• Travis Over Anger
• 10 Dollar Saturday
• Yearly Inspection Tomorrow
• Doctor Appointment Tomorrow

I woke up at 4 in the afternoon, this Sunday. This was after almost having gotten up and started my day at around noon. I could have put the Saints game on Travis' TV and watched just as much the little band of rolling updates on the bottom to keep track of the Patriots game which was being played simultaneously.

It was depressing to have missed those 4 hours, and to see the sky dimming already, ushering in a night when I'll have to go out and busk, after spending my last dime on batteries for the spotlight.

I need to spend maybe a good hour tidying up the apartment. I'm thinking of shoving a bunch of stuff in a closet, clearing tables and the bed in the process, then just cleaning the surfaces of the tables, making the bed and then sweeping and mopping the floor.

I'm almost out of food, with 11 days left before any food stamps come.

I seem to recall from years past, the 20 bucks or whatever that my mom sends me on my birthday about 3 weeks from now, having saved me from abject poverty; and hearing the "It'll start to pick up in October" mantra, spoken by other French Quarter workers.

I haven't been the best steward of my affairs the past month. I obviously would have done things differently had I been my myself.
I tried not to do things like take a night off the times that Travis did pay me in food, or when he gave me the 20 bucks. But it did have an effect on me; not being able to meditate and focus upon what is most important and plan accordingly each morning.
Being passed a bowl of weed first thing in the morning, while a friendly gesture, is disruptive on the whole. I got to where I was turning down the offer, after Travis had stepped out of the shower and was lighting his out-of-the-shower, I guess, bowl.
He would still talk non-stop for a half hour after he smoked, in the way that pot makes some people do.
I have the same issue, and can remember situations where I was smoking with people who wanted to become absorbed in whatever was on TV after the pipe had gone around, and had to shush me because I was rambling, with one thought leading to another.
That might be Travis' whole deal right there. He stays stoned most of the time and he talks non-stop most of the time; that could be the reason.
Last night, as we started to walk Royal Street, he started to talk about the statue of the "Confederacy of Dunces" guy that is on Canal Street, not far from the Burgundy House hostel where he is staying.
It was apropos of nothing, but it was a talk that he had given me once in the past. It had spanned more than an hour then.
I recognized some of the very same phrases. "Most people walk by that stature and probably think that it's a stature of some bum, or something, but..."
And then he started to re-tell the whole story of the book, the writer, the play, the fact that there hasn't been a "Confederacy of Dunces" movie yet because they want to make sure they do it justice.
I had to stop him.
"So, what made you think of the statue, anyway?" I asked.
He kind of laughed as if he realized that he had started talking about it out of the blue.
"It's just that..." he seemed to want to give his spiel about it so badly; like it would make him feel great just to re-tell it.
"You already told me the whole story."
He still wanted to tell it again.
I finally got him off the subject by telling him that I was going to read the book someday, and I didn't want it spoiled.
.
A young guy showed up at the Lilly Pad last (Saturday) night and listened to me for a while, but didn't throw anything in my jar. Then, he wanted to play my guitar. "I understand that some musicians are kind of picky about that, so it's OK, if I can't," he said.
I told him that I sometimes let tourists play "if they, at least, throw a tip in my jar."
"Oh, I don't want any money; you can keep all the tips," he said pretentiously, as if this guy who had no money would make my some by playing my instrument.
"I play guitar and harmonica too, but my stuff is at the apartment," he added.
Since his "apartment" turned out to be nearby, I figured that he could just go there and play his own guitar, if he was so in the mood to play.
He wanted to play mine probably because he thought he could impress me with his skills.
I didn't let him play.
Then, he wanted to play my harmonica, while I played the guitar.
This is when I started to think he was mentally ill. There is no way I would ever put the 40 dollar harmonica back in my own mouth after some random person had played it. Not even after boiling it for 5 minutes.  Especially if they played the way I do which can cause lips to blister, which rubs off skin cells, and in the case of the Marine Band harps with wooden combs that swell and jut out, might cut my lip, producing some blood.
At the very least, he would be blowing his saliva, along with whatever whiskey he was drinking, into my harmonica. And for what? So I could wind up saying "wow, you're really good on the harmonica?" So I could keep whatever tips went into my jar while he wailed away on my harp?
If he is that good, he wouldn't be stopping to ask a street musician if he could play his harmonica.
He was probably about 20 years old, and had wild curly hair and was dressed in a way that you couldn't tell if he was a wealthy guy who was kicking back and going casual, or was broke.
I made the mistake of telling him that, if he went to his apartment and got his guitar, I would jam with him when he came back.
He came back and I began to play and he played along with what I was going to do anyways.
I was still conscious of the tourists walking past and trying to do my normal set without making any allowances for the kid, whose guitar had been strung with mismatching strings. Nothing say's "broke skeezer" like a guitar that had an e string where a b string should be. Was it a nice guitar just kicking back and going casual?
Then, as he drank off the pint bottle of cheap whiskey at his side, he began to improvise (I thought) lyrics over the chords that I was playing, which were to my own songs that already had their own words.
I kept an open mind, realizing the delicacy of the process of creating art, and I knew that if I had the attitude of "this guy sucks," I would be feeding into that by not supporting him, musically or in an attitudinal way. So, I played my best, while he sang with the growl of those who are trying to sing too loudly.
He was only 20 years old, after all, and had showed me some of the respect due a musician who has been playing 30 years longer than him; his desire to impress me fell into that category.
The bottom line was that there weren't any tips going into my jar, not when he was "improvising" lyrics and I was playing my best accompaniment, nor when I was playing and singing one of my songs and he was trying to play lead guitar. At one point he kept repeating: "Here we go again..."

Some of his other lyrics made me wonder if he was mocking me. They weren't as transparent as if he were singing: "I'm a loser who wears a black hat and plays on the street and my life is going nowhere (here we go again; here we go again?)" but I wondered just what he was trying to say, before learning that he had just been parroting existing songs.
But then, after a few more emboldening gulps of his cheap whiskey, he took the lead and began to play a Sublime song. I recognized the song but asked him if it were some other band after he finished "Dude, that's Sublime!" he said, incredulous that I hadn't known that.
Then, things went downhill after I, once again was unable to gracefully get him to leave.
"I need to get back to work," I said.
He looked at me as if stunned. "We were rocking out!" he protested. At least one of us was... I thought.
I told him I hadn't been planning upon playing whatever the next song was that he had started (It was some "bona-fide" busking classic like "Black Hole Sun," by Sound Garden -a song I like, but I just didn't feel in need of a black hole sun coming to washing away the rain in my present mood).
Travis showed up at that point, whereupon the kid hastened his packing up and leaving, perhaps thinking that Travis was some sort of "muscle" who hung around nearby me and was there to assist in situations when I have decided that a half hour of jamming without producing any tips was enough and I wanted to go back to my solo thing.
"God, he was doing those songs that like every little punk with a guitar does..." lamented Travis.
It turned out that the kid had not been playing his own original music, and even had been "freestyling" the lyrics of established bands over the top of the chords to my original songs. Travis had been listening from afar throughout.
"That's even worse," I said.
But, the kid went away angrily and decided to set up about 100 feet from me and continue to play.

I wanted to tell him that my whole "hustle" was to be this guy who sits by himself, and plays his own music because he is lost in his own thoughts, and has perhaps been relegated to the fringe by a world in which few understand him.
People expect different things from a duo. For one thing; that they would be kindred souls in some way; having decided to team up because of shared outlooks on life and because the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; and that they had gotten together at least once to rehearse and that they both admired and had been influenced by the same bands (like Sublime) and on top of it all, they are best friends forever.
I met up with Travis after I finished at about 2:30 AM, having made only 10 bucks the whole night.
He said that the kid with the guitar had gotten in his face and told him "You messed up my gig; it wasn't until you came along that he decided he didn't want to play anymore." then he made some kind of threats; but by then he would have consumed the whole pint of whiskey and all I can hope for is that, if he indeed does have an apartment in the area of the Lilly Pad, he will show up sober and I can explain the above to him.
I think he lacked the courage to go out and busk on his own. Maybe after jamming with me and not being booed off the street by people, and then finishing his whiskey, he would have gotten what he wanted out of the evening.
I just don't want him to come back tonight and want to smash my guitar.
Now It's Nine
I'm almost out of food, having a big bag of Basmati rice, a lot of oatmeal and, of course beans; always beans -the last food to be cooked at the end of a month, when one is hungry enough to appreciate that beans aren't that bad.
Going out and making some money and perhaps making my peace with the kid who lives in the area would help out my situation.