16 Dollar Thursday
I was out of money after having eaten one third of the strip of acid that Geo and Mindy Lee, as those are the names of the couple that want me to play at their wedding, had given me, and given Bobby the other two thirds.
I ate the acid as I sat outside the Uxi Duxi, at 8 PM on Wednesday night.
"Did you eat it?" asked Chloe as she was leaving, after having done her closing chores.
"Yeah, one third of it; it was supposedly three hits all told..."
"Be careful," she said.
Comet Headlights
I kind of knew what she meant. I can remember driving a car once, so dosed that the dashes in the middle of the road (indicating that it is legal to pass) had turned into arrows which, were veering up off the road and flying over my head, instead of going under the car. I think this was due to the way my windshield was refracting the light, something I had become sensitive to.
Also, the headlights of the cars coming toward me in the other lane had grown long tails, and were whizzing by me like comets, to my left.
Having been "experienced" before, I knew enough to keep the arrows flying over my shoulder and to avoid crashing into any comets, and I made it home fine.
Wednesday night, I was getting the same sense of time distortion that I was familiar with, from 1984, whereby, the mind, which is fixed upon some destination or some result that is desired in the future, has to fight against an increasing fascination with what is happening in the present moment, and what seems to be a slowing down of time.
Like, if you really want to just get home and sit in front of your fireplace, and you can see your house up ahead, it will seem like, with every step you take you get closer to it, yet, time is slowing down proportionately, so that it seems like by the time you get to the house you won't be able to go inside because time will have stopped and the few seconds it would take to walk inside will take an eternity.
This is how you might be observed sitting in the flower bed in front of your house, staring at a flower for an hour.
What you are doing that second becomes more fascinating than anything you can bring about by the disciplined placing of one foot in front of another, blocking out "distractions" and focusing upon yourself sitting in front of the fireplace.
"What a great place to trip," you might think -the warmth of the fire, the fact that the heat is actually sunlight that was trapped and photosynthesized by leaves then stored as energy in wood, which is now being released by the flames using some of the oxygen the leaves released (trees have always been sunlight batteries to me in this regard) along with light and crackling sounds- but then what you are doing at that particular second rises up to compete with the yet only imagined future scene.
Even if you make it home before becoming trapped in the current moment, you aren't out of the woods yet, so to speak, because you still have to light the fire, instead of sitting for hours staring at the wood and seeing whole worlds in the knots and bark of it, or perhaps hearing the tree tell you its story. This could delay the setting of it upon kindling and ignition of it -kind of rude to cut a log off in the middle of a sentence like that.
So, as soon as I noticed the first signs from the one-third of the strip, I hopped on my bike, thinking of Cinderella and my bike turning into a pumpkin at "midnight."
But, I decided to pop into Bobby's apartment to tell him that someone had given me some acid the night before and that I had taken some of it and that he was welcome to the rest of it.
I wound up picking up his acoustic guitar, which I felt I was able to breath life into. As a musician, acid takes one back to the fundamental joy of just the sound of a steel string, stretched so taut that it vibrates at, say, 359.6 cycles per second, being set into motion.
This was kind of the "problem" that the group Pink Floyd was having with one of its founding members, Cyd Barrett, who was often so dosed that he would tune up for 45 minutes, deeply fascinated by the process, or wander off the stage in the middle of a song in pursuit of a helium balloon that someone might have released, following it until it is far away from where the Pink Floyd concert is proceeding, minus one guitar player and singer.
So, I had enough wherewithal, after playing Bobby's guitar well enough that he handed me a bud of weed "for the impromptu lesson," to will myself to my apartment, having avoided falling into the trap of sitting on the back steps, petting Harold the cat all night, because he was hungry, and became my master, meowing me along, like Lassie leading someone to where someone else is at the bottom of a well with a broken leg, until we were inside, and I made him a plate.
I had bought him food on my back from the Uxi Duxi which put me at risk of spending hours looking at all the pretty candy bars, or opening the cooler door to stick my hand inside and then pulling it out, fascinated by the effect of the temperature change on my nerves, type of things.
I set up the Snowball microphone and fired up the laptop, through an act of will, so that my subsequent noodling around on the guitar (the musical equivalent of sticking my hand in a freezer then pulling it out) would, at least, be captured.
It was after 11 PM on a Wednesday night, and I knew that if money was my only motivation for wanting to get to the Lilly Pad, dodging comets all the way, then I would be setting myself up for disappointment, and so I stayed in.
Last (Thursday) night, I was faced with having to go out to busk with only a dollar and change to my "name."
Not having money for kratom, I mostly ruled out doing a shot.
I decided to go the the Starbucks, bringing my laptop, guitar and other gear with me.
Getting there around 6 PM left open the possibility that, should I be able to buy someone their coffee off my gift card, in exchange for an equal or lesser amount of cash, I would still have time to pedal up to the Uxi Duxi for a shot before they closed, which would put me right back on my regular schedule. I could drop the laptop back at the apartment, so as to have one less thing to worry about, should someone run off with my backpack.
At one point I decided that I would feel too much like a kratom addict, racing 3 miles on my bike to get a shot of it, and then having to turn around and go right back to the Quarter to busk. One never wants to lean on the crutch of any drug in order to produce results, if that were the case, I probably would have gotten on crystal meth a long time ago and would be pulling wads of money out of my pocket at the end of 12 hour long busking sessions...that's a temptation, though.
My laptop wouldn't connect to the wi-fi at Starbucks, most likely because they changed their log in page to include a form asking for e-mail address, name and zip code.
This is ostensibly so they can send you coupons and offers, but is possibly a step towards them solving their problem of "people hanging out and not buying anything."
The New Orleans contingency of these is comprised of groups of young, African Americans, who sit in the place, poking at phones that they have, panhandling customers, and ready to snatch anything that those same people that just gave them a dollar might turn their backs upon, etc.
Colin Mitchell was counting his busking money there once, and had it snatched off the table and run out the door by an older black man, who had walked by the place, seen what Colin was doing, then come in and stood by the restroom door as if waiting to use it, but probably positioning himself so as to gain a running start.
He was out of Colin's sight then, but was watching his reflection in the window -Colin now reflects- waiting until he did something -bend over to find the electrical outlet under the table to plug in his own laptop- which gave him the precious couple seconds that he needed.
That's what you get for arranging your money on a table in front of you, as if playing solitaire with it, in The French Quarter.
I couldn't help thinking that it had been part of Colin's way of telling the world: "Look at me, how well I'm doing...I'm 67 years old and there is no slowing down in sight for me; I play for 5 or 6 hours a night, and you can see how much people appreciate me!"
Johnny B.,
another busker (the clean guy) would frequently expose a fat wad of bills, in places like on the streetcar, after having having had a 300 dollar, or so, day, lest any of the other riders think he was using that mode of transportation because he was as poor as some of them, who didn't even own a bike.
Instead of thinking: "Wow, I wish I was as good, and as good looking, as Johnny B. so I could make that kind of money," which might be what he wanted me to think, I would always think: "Now he has to get off a block past Galvez Street and walk to his apartment through a bad neighborhood, unarmed, and pulling his amp behind him on rollers with his "$3,000" Martin guitar on his back, to get home, and a bunch of low-lifes now know he has a lot of money on him. What an idiot!"
I count my money locked in the bathroom at Starbucks, or standing in front of the liquor case at The Unique Grocery, like I'm probably going to use it all for a bottle of booze, and so, will be broke when I leave.
I asked Colin if he was going to pay cash for his coffee.
He was only going to get a free glass of water, he said (and then spent about 5 minutes telling me about how he no longer drinks coffee before busking) but then gave me a couple bucks (after I spent about 5 minutes telling him about having stayed in and tripped on acid instead of busking the night before). That was very nice of him.
It was too late, then, for me to make it to the Uxi Duxi, so I proceeded to the Lilly Pad. I scanned the area for David The Water Jug Player, but mostly so I could avoid him. I had only a tiny bit of bud to smoke while tuning up.
The busking was slow, but steady.
I have a feeling that the 16 bucks that I made in a couple hours would have at least doubled, had I forced myself to stay out another couple hours.
But, this problem of feeling like I have nothing left to give after the tune up joint wears off is a legitimate concern.
It was only 11:09 PM when I felt that I needed to take a break. This is before Lilly and her daughters usually arrive home, and before the night shift (who make fresh coffee) has come on at The Quartermaster.
The traffic at the spot seemed to be increasing.
But, it was a bit chilly -too cold to play in just the black tee shirt, and the only other shirt I had was the one I wore in Starbucks, so I would look "studious" and I didn't feel like I was going to get tipped while wearing it. This was just part of the insecurity that can set in from smoking pot.
Yeah, a legitimate concern, that.
E-mail Snaffu
I haven't been able to send The Lidgleys of London a thank-you note via e-mail because my frozen hard drive had my user name and password on it and I have forgotten both. I opened that account in 1996, and it is hard for me to remember what zip code I was in at the time, what fake name I might have used, and if I was lying about my age back then.
So this is the thank you note. Alyne mentioned that she had been sad to read on this blog that I had been hoping that there would be coffee in the box, which there wasn't, in physical form, but those hopes had been fulfilled by the Starbucks gift card. I might not have communicated that correctly. Who would I be to complain about anything that wasn't in the miraculously appearing box from London, anyway?
I was out of money after having eaten one third of the strip of acid that Geo and Mindy Lee, as those are the names of the couple that want me to play at their wedding, had given me, and given Bobby the other two thirds.
 |
| Picture yourself on a train at a station... |
I ate the acid as I sat outside the Uxi Duxi, at 8 PM on Wednesday night.
"Did you eat it?" asked Chloe as she was leaving, after having done her closing chores.
"Yeah, one third of it; it was supposedly three hits all told..."
"Be careful," she said.
Comet Headlights
I kind of knew what she meant. I can remember driving a car once, so dosed that the dashes in the middle of the road (indicating that it is legal to pass) had turned into arrows which, were veering up off the road and flying over my head, instead of going under the car. I think this was due to the way my windshield was refracting the light, something I had become sensitive to.
Also, the headlights of the cars coming toward me in the other lane had grown long tails, and were whizzing by me like comets, to my left.
Having been "experienced" before, I knew enough to keep the arrows flying over my shoulder and to avoid crashing into any comets, and I made it home fine.
Wednesday night, I was getting the same sense of time distortion that I was familiar with, from 1984, whereby, the mind, which is fixed upon some destination or some result that is desired in the future, has to fight against an increasing fascination with what is happening in the present moment, and what seems to be a slowing down of time.
Like, if you really want to just get home and sit in front of your fireplace, and you can see your house up ahead, it will seem like, with every step you take you get closer to it, yet, time is slowing down proportionately, so that it seems like by the time you get to the house you won't be able to go inside because time will have stopped and the few seconds it would take to walk inside will take an eternity.
This is how you might be observed sitting in the flower bed in front of your house, staring at a flower for an hour.
What you are doing that second becomes more fascinating than anything you can bring about by the disciplined placing of one foot in front of another, blocking out "distractions" and focusing upon yourself sitting in front of the fireplace.
"What a great place to trip," you might think -the warmth of the fire, the fact that the heat is actually sunlight that was trapped and photosynthesized by leaves then stored as energy in wood, which is now being released by the flames using some of the oxygen the leaves released (trees have always been sunlight batteries to me in this regard) along with light and crackling sounds- but then what you are doing at that particular second rises up to compete with the yet only imagined future scene.
Even if you make it home before becoming trapped in the current moment, you aren't out of the woods yet, so to speak, because you still have to light the fire, instead of sitting for hours staring at the wood and seeing whole worlds in the knots and bark of it, or perhaps hearing the tree tell you its story. This could delay the setting of it upon kindling and ignition of it -kind of rude to cut a log off in the middle of a sentence like that.
So, as soon as I noticed the first signs from the one-third of the strip, I hopped on my bike, thinking of Cinderella and my bike turning into a pumpkin at "midnight."
But, I decided to pop into Bobby's apartment to tell him that someone had given me some acid the night before and that I had taken some of it and that he was welcome to the rest of it.
I wound up picking up his acoustic guitar, which I felt I was able to breath life into. As a musician, acid takes one back to the fundamental joy of just the sound of a steel string, stretched so taut that it vibrates at, say, 359.6 cycles per second, being set into motion.
This was kind of the "problem" that the group Pink Floyd was having with one of its founding members, Cyd Barrett, who was often so dosed that he would tune up for 45 minutes, deeply fascinated by the process, or wander off the stage in the middle of a song in pursuit of a helium balloon that someone might have released, following it until it is far away from where the Pink Floyd concert is proceeding, minus one guitar player and singer.
So, I had enough wherewithal, after playing Bobby's guitar well enough that he handed me a bud of weed "for the impromptu lesson," to will myself to my apartment, having avoided falling into the trap of sitting on the back steps, petting Harold the cat all night, because he was hungry, and became my master, meowing me along, like Lassie leading someone to where someone else is at the bottom of a well with a broken leg, until we were inside, and I made him a plate.
I had bought him food on my back from the Uxi Duxi which put me at risk of spending hours looking at all the pretty candy bars, or opening the cooler door to stick my hand inside and then pulling it out, fascinated by the effect of the temperature change on my nerves, type of things.
 |
| 9 Players, One Tip Jar, And A Dog To Feed, Yikes! |
I set up the Snowball microphone and fired up the laptop, through an act of will, so that my subsequent noodling around on the guitar (the musical equivalent of sticking my hand in a freezer then pulling it out) would, at least, be captured.
It was after 11 PM on a Wednesday night, and I knew that if money was my only motivation for wanting to get to the Lilly Pad, dodging comets all the way, then I would be setting myself up for disappointment, and so I stayed in.
Last (Thursday) night, I was faced with having to go out to busk with only a dollar and change to my "name."
Not having money for kratom, I mostly ruled out doing a shot.
I decided to go the the Starbucks, bringing my laptop, guitar and other gear with me.
Getting there around 6 PM left open the possibility that, should I be able to buy someone their coffee off my gift card, in exchange for an equal or lesser amount of cash, I would still have time to pedal up to the Uxi Duxi for a shot before they closed, which would put me right back on my regular schedule. I could drop the laptop back at the apartment, so as to have one less thing to worry about, should someone run off with my backpack.
At one point I decided that I would feel too much like a kratom addict, racing 3 miles on my bike to get a shot of it, and then having to turn around and go right back to the Quarter to busk. One never wants to lean on the crutch of any drug in order to produce results, if that were the case, I probably would have gotten on crystal meth a long time ago and would be pulling wads of money out of my pocket at the end of 12 hour long busking sessions...that's a temptation, though.
My laptop wouldn't connect to the wi-fi at Starbucks, most likely because they changed their log in page to include a form asking for e-mail address, name and zip code.
This is ostensibly so they can send you coupons and offers, but is possibly a step towards them solving their problem of "people hanging out and not buying anything."
The New Orleans contingency of these is comprised of groups of young, African Americans, who sit in the place, poking at phones that they have, panhandling customers, and ready to snatch anything that those same people that just gave them a dollar might turn their backs upon, etc.
Colin Mitchell was counting his busking money there once, and had it snatched off the table and run out the door by an older black man, who had walked by the place, seen what Colin was doing, then come in and stood by the restroom door as if waiting to use it, but probably positioning himself so as to gain a running start.
He was out of Colin's sight then, but was watching his reflection in the window -Colin now reflects- waiting until he did something -bend over to find the electrical outlet under the table to plug in his own laptop- which gave him the precious couple seconds that he needed.
That's what you get for arranging your money on a table in front of you, as if playing solitaire with it, in The French Quarter.
I couldn't help thinking that it had been part of Colin's way of telling the world: "Look at me, how well I'm doing...I'm 67 years old and there is no slowing down in sight for me; I play for 5 or 6 hours a night, and you can see how much people appreciate me!"
Johnny B.,
 |
| "...Two hundred and one, two hundred and... |
| Hey, Come back here!!" |
another busker (the clean guy) would frequently expose a fat wad of bills, in places like on the streetcar, after having having had a 300 dollar, or so, day, lest any of the other riders think he was using that mode of transportation because he was as poor as some of them, who didn't even own a bike.
Instead of thinking: "Wow, I wish I was as good, and as good looking, as Johnny B. so I could make that kind of money," which might be what he wanted me to think, I would always think: "Now he has to get off a block past Galvez Street and walk to his apartment through a bad neighborhood, unarmed, and pulling his amp behind him on rollers with his "$3,000" Martin guitar on his back, to get home, and a bunch of low-lifes now know he has a lot of money on him. What an idiot!"
I count my money locked in the bathroom at Starbucks, or standing in front of the liquor case at The Unique Grocery, like I'm probably going to use it all for a bottle of booze, and so, will be broke when I leave.
I asked Colin if he was going to pay cash for his coffee.
He was only going to get a free glass of water, he said (and then spent about 5 minutes telling me about how he no longer drinks coffee before busking) but then gave me a couple bucks (after I spent about 5 minutes telling him about having stayed in and tripped on acid instead of busking the night before). That was very nice of him.
It was too late, then, for me to make it to the Uxi Duxi, so I proceeded to the Lilly Pad. I scanned the area for David The Water Jug Player, but mostly so I could avoid him. I had only a tiny bit of bud to smoke while tuning up.
The busking was slow, but steady.
I have a feeling that the 16 bucks that I made in a couple hours would have at least doubled, had I forced myself to stay out another couple hours.
But, this problem of feeling like I have nothing left to give after the tune up joint wears off is a legitimate concern.
It was only 11:09 PM when I felt that I needed to take a break. This is before Lilly and her daughters usually arrive home, and before the night shift (who make fresh coffee) has come on at The Quartermaster.The traffic at the spot seemed to be increasing.
But, it was a bit chilly -too cold to play in just the black tee shirt, and the only other shirt I had was the one I wore in Starbucks, so I would look "studious" and I didn't feel like I was going to get tipped while wearing it. This was just part of the insecurity that can set in from smoking pot.
Yeah, a legitimate concern, that.
E-mail Snaffu
I haven't been able to send The Lidgleys of London a thank-you note via e-mail because my frozen hard drive had my user name and password on it and I have forgotten both. I opened that account in 1996, and it is hard for me to remember what zip code I was in at the time, what fake name I might have used, and if I was lying about my age back then.
So this is the thank you note. Alyne mentioned that she had been sad to read on this blog that I had been hoping that there would be coffee in the box, which there wasn't, in physical form, but those hopes had been fulfilled by the Starbucks gift card. I might not have communicated that correctly. Who would I be to complain about anything that wasn't in the miraculously appearing box from London, anyway?
What kind of dumbass spreads out their money to count it in a Starbucks? Do your counting in the bathroom, in a stall, if you have to.
ReplyDeleteThere was something, I dunno, in the newspaper in with the comics, or maybe a hand-out at school, somewhere, when I was a kid in the 70s and one of the pieces of advice was, "don't flash your cash" which I always thought was pretty funny.