"That's Not A Woman, Ben"

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The Silent Witness

The "silent witness" is a term familiar to me from the CDs of Doctor Deepak Chopra that I listened to, back in 2005, while I slept in my car in Jacksonville, Florida. I was working out of the labor pool during the days and then at a Dominos Pizza at night, and had taken the 6 disc lecture out of the library and had thought that perhaps having Deepak lecture to me while I slept might help elevate me from sleeping in my car in Jacksonville.

It (the silent witness) is the part of you which is hearing yourself think in your head. The idea is that, if there is a voice in your head, which is assumed to be "yourself" thinking, you wouldn't know it unless there was part of you that is a listener.

The silent witness is this part of you, the real you.

It's the "rain" part which is the matter

When you say "I was thinking," then who was thinking, and who is the person referring to himself as "I," and is telling you about it?
I was listening to my brain thinking...because the thoughts came from one place and were heard by a conscious being that continues to exist, even when the thinking stops and the body is gone. Certain religious groups might call this the "soul" of a person...

The Power of Now, is a book that I am reading now which echoes the good doctor, in this regard.

It is a cool thing, and has "worked" for me already. It is another one of the things that a spiritually minded person, like I am prone to be, sees as something along the way, in this case a book, that only appears when the seeker is ready for it, and prepared to use it.

Kratom was like this.

I had wandered into The Unique Grocery on Royal Street, like I had done a hundred times before, and had spotted the packages of it, which reminded me of the "spice," or the "mojo," which used to be sold, as incense, not for human consumption, and which would get you as stoned as the stickiest, skunk-iest bud of weed will, when smoked.

It wasn't the mojo, but it was something that "I don't know what it is, but only white people buy it," turned out to be like a Ritalin for me, helping me to concentrate, and making me want to work, basically. The video that I had Googled on kratom showed South American workers, chewing the stuff down like a morning cup of coffee, before going out to probably pick coffee beans for 12 hours.

But, coming upon the kratom made me think of the possibility of things appearing in this universe which have been created out of the imagination. As if there was no such thing as kratom until I had attained a certain level of enlightenment, when it magically came into existence, appearing on the shelves of Unique, to fill the role of helping me to concentrate.

One good thing about it is that, it makes me play the guitar more precisely and helps me look at the instrument from the perspective of it being a machine, along with my body, and steers me towards being more "technical," more Tanya Huang-ish, with the realization that the most awesome sounding piece of music can be distilled to its components like the breaking of the beat into subdivisions of eighth and sixteenth notes and that the coolest sounding thing musically can be transcribed to something that can be practiced over and over with this in mind; even though it might have been arrived at through just feeling it and going for it and "I don't know what I played, I just went up high on the neck and rifled off a few notes and then bent it at just the right time" type of stuff.

Do I have any examples? Not quite yet.

I haven't gotten around to mixing some stuff down to stereo and then making a video of it with whatever still shots playing on the screen.

But, since it is raining and 51 degrees on this Wednesday night, maybe I can bone up on a few things in the apartment.

I started putting together a song which is called "Cold To The Bone," which was basically inspired by my having left Bobby's apartment to walk across the parking lot back to my place and discovering that the temperature had dropped and the wind picked up while I had been passing the chicken bone joint holder that Bobby has fashioned back and forth with him.

Given that Bobby has also a nut piece on his guitar that he replace the original hard plastic one with a, you guessed it, one made of bone one, from an animal known for the musicality of its bones, it was easy for me to start thinking of Bobby as a bony kind of guy (I imagined seeing him in a flying contraption high over Sacred Heart Apartments, which had been fashioned out of a bicycle attached to wings made out of bird bones, chicken to be exact, pedaling away and circling).

So, when the cold winds were going through my clothing that was damp and clammy from my having recently sweated out the flu in them and not having gone out to busk up laundry money, it was easy for me to start thinking, then start humming "Cold To The Bone," which it was.

And this song, as I was recording it, and because I am not my thoughts but rather a silent witness to them, merged into another tune that I had in my head already which was about Sonny Bono -you know, Sonny "Bone" o.

This was a coincidence, or my subconscious mind working.

"Oh no, Sonny Bono, better slow now, Sonny, whoa now, Sonny, oh no go slow now, Sonny better not drink and ski. Go now, Sonny, go now Sonny Bono; whoa Sonny, better slow Sonny; watch out for that tree!" type of thing.

The song owes a bit to "George of the Jungle," admittedly. But I naturally found myself doing it on the same drum beat after the "Cold To The Bone" one.

I am sprucing up the place, in addition to the songs on my recording studio, in preparation for the visit from my friend, Ben Lambie, which is 7 days away.

Yup, next week, I will be at Louis Armstrong airport at 10:43 PM to greet Ben after he arrives and begins to feel nervous because he is in a place that is unfamiliar to him and there are a lot of strange people around. What could go wrong, could I forget about it? Probably not, if I spend the rest of the week cleaning my place in anticipation of him showing up; and thinking in the back of my mind that I might be able to get some money out of him.

He had told me that he found an Air-bnb rental on Canal Street and they wanted $600 for a week.
I offered him to stay at my place, with no mention of any cash being exchanged, but still realize that I am saving him 600 bucks. I have a feeling that, in the natural course of us hanging out during the week, I will broach the subject of him giving me some fraction of that. It will probably be in regards to time I might take off from busking on a given night, to perhaps accompany him to a club on Frenchmen Street. He doesn't seem to be the type that would take readily to that particular scene of chaos and skeezery without having a guide and companion, and someone to keep him out of trouble, at least the kind that I will see coming when he might not.
"That's not a woman, Ben..." type of thing...

The Uxi Duxi is closing momentarily; I will hit "post" and then probably take the trolley on my all day pass that expires at 9:15 PM, down to the Family Dollar for a can of cat food, maybe a light bulb, and perhaps to put money on my green American Express prepaid card so I can order a new harmonica soon...