On The Lips Of Chantilly

I'm at Rouses Market on Carollton Street and it is raining outside. It's a Saturday afternoon and this is the middle of the French Quarter Music Festival. All of the acts scheduled for today's outside venues have been canceled.
I don't know if they will all play tomorrow, which is supposed to be sunny, making for a long day of music, or what they will do.

It's an awful long way for those musicians I've never heard of to come, only to have their shows canceled entirely.

The Guy Who Only Has Plastic

I played last night and will say that I made 25 bucks in almost 3 hours, though 11 dollars of that was paid to me in a pack of American Spirit cigarettes and 2 Monster "Zero" energy drinks by one guy who sat and hung out, blocking my tip jar from any other activity for a good hour.

He was one of those people who apologize for themselves a lot, telling me "you probably think I'm an idiot," and "I hope you didn't take that in the wrong way," and offering to leave if he was bothering me so many times that it started to bother me.

But, he had bought me 11 dollars worth of stuff that I probably would have spent my own money on, and so I had to kind of meter his hanging out in order to give him 11 dollars worth of it, and then gracefully tell him that I needed to get back to "my thing," whereupon he graciously left.

He said that he, at one point, had to make his living busking, but then had graduated with some degree and had taken the alternate turn at that fork in the road which leads to a life of busking in one direction and ? in the other.

He said that, after he had landed whatever great paying job that he has (even though he didn't have any cash, he had plenty of plastic) he had felt a sense of "infinite nothing."

He was the epitome of "the guy who chases after wealth and status and the security of it, rather than the uncertainty of the busking life and then regrets it enough so that he envies and admires the courage of buskers and tips them well," if only with cigarettes and energy drinks.

Heard of any?

If I had been thinking more quickly, I might have gotten him to pick up a bag of dry cat food for Harold, while he was at The Quartermaster overspending on the other stuff.

Lilly's Tenant

I had gotten to the Lilly Pad at the unusually early time of 9:30 PM.

All the buskers that I passed on Royal Street had said that they had had great days and wished me the same. This is often a kiss of death type of thing, and that was what I was thinking: "Watch me be the only one to not have a great day..."

Soon, a skinny, kind of nervous bespectacled man with short reddish hair appeared and announced to me that he had just bought the house that I was playing in front of.

He had just moved in, he said.

He wanted me to play some, so he could hear how loud I was.

I played a Neil Young song.

He said that he liked Neil Young and had no problem with me playing his music at my particular volume, in a way that sounded like he was "allowing" me to play on the front step of the house.

I didn't say anything about Lilly, only thanked him perfunctorily, telling him that I made my living there and that it was a relief to hear him say that.

Soon arrived Lilly and Chantilly.

The former gave David a polite smile, then turning to me, said: "This is my new tenant."

"David."

"Yes, you've already met?"

"Yeah, we were..."

David began to look confused at this point, perhaps sensing the shift in dynamic from his having gone from the guy who "just bought this house," to well, actually I rent a room in the back on the second floor, and seeing how close I seemed to be with his new landlady. I guess Neil Young will be quite fine, after all...

He returned later on in the evening and sat back down on the stoop.

Appearing to be more drunk, he started requesting different music, while not having tipped me.

I was game for playing "One More Time," the Lynyrd Skynyrd song off their Street Survivors album, in answer to his request for "some Skynyrd that you don't hear played all the time," as it is in the harmonicas key of D, but I was eventually faced with the "buddy, if you're not tipping you gotta go" irony of having to ask the guy if he would please not sit in front of the house in which he has just rented a room.

Sunday

Come check me out, after you're done

watching black men jump...

A sunny, but very breezy and a tad bit chilly when the wind chill is factored in, Sunday afternoon it is.

I have come to the Uxi Duxi, where it is just about the time to call Lilly if indeed we are to "walk around," as suggested by her when I saw her Friday night.

It was suggested right in front of David, her new tenant, perhaps as a way to communicate to him that, yes, Lilly and I are close, and take walks together.

I sensed this line of thought and said to Lilly: "We're still going to move to Barcelona together, at some point, aren't we?"

Her face contorted a bit and I sensed that Barcelona is perhaps now "out" in favor of Nantucket or Martha's Vinyard as retirement destinations for Lillian.

"Wherever we go, we're gonna take you with us," assured Lilly.

"You're going to be dealing with an empty nest syndrome, soon," I said, looking at 22 year old Chantilly, who shrunk away a bit, placing more of herself behind Lilly in the process.

David then proceeded to the opposite stoop, where he had told me he would be fine sitting upon, so that he could people-watch, as that seemed to be his deal, and not be blocking my tip jar, but had not done so at the point that Lilly and Chantilly had arrived.

Lilly took this opportunity to walk with him, in order to pass some intelligence to him, out of earshot of both myself and Chantilly, who had remained stationary in front of me.

It's almost Shakespearian (or something) that the oldest daughter of Lilly would be such a "shrinking violet."

She evinces the most extreme shyness in a situation such as it was, after she had ventured forth to ask me if I was familiar with a certain ukelele player, whose name I only recall as sounding something like McCovey.

When I said that I wasn't, the crimson, or perhaps violet shade that she turned was visible even in the darkness, as if the weight of her awkwardness had landed on her like an anvil dropped from above, causing her to literally shrink a bit as she contracted her shoulders, looking as if she "could have died" from embarrassment.

Maybe she thought that the mention of the newest and coolest ukulele-ist to make the scene would be the perfect ice-breaker for us to have a conversation.

Before I could mollify her with the fact that I don't even own a smartphone and thus nobody can tweet me links to trending new ukulele talent, and that she shouldn't feel embarrassed about liking a ukulele player that the guy who busks in front of her house has never heard about, and that I think he is probably quite entertaining, there was a sound from Lilly, who stood at the other stoop in front of David.

Chantilly drew in a gasp of air and then used that oxygen to expel: "Oh, I've gotta go," and then to launch herself in the direction of Lilly, who was already at the gate with key poised and the unspoken threat of: "come hither or I'll lock you outside, where you'll have to spend the night striking up awkward conversations with people" almost palpable.

That was for about as long as Lilly might allow one of her daughters to have an unchaperoned conversation with those that she trusts enough to allow to do so; long enough to ask: "Have you seen McCovey?," and then to send up a signal to get her out of there by evincing signs of an impending death by embarrassment.

Chantilly resembles Lilly the most, of her two daughters. It is as if Lilly created one in her own image, before making an angel, which would be her younger sister, "Angelique," a couple years later, probably after having read somewhere that it is best for a woman to allow herself that period of recovery between each birthing.

Could it have been Coconami that sounded like McCovey to me?

Chantilly has the same knowing smile as Lilly, who seems to be smiling more over the fact of how funny it would be if people knew what she was really smiling over, rather than what might be evident to them.

Lilly's Tenet

Like when someone is doing something that is amusing people and Lilly is smiling because of some secret knowledge she has, "I guess that's how guys act when their wives beat them every night, ha ha ha" type of thing.

Chantilly will often exchange a look with me when we are both more amused at Lilly being herself than by whatever humor she is trying to interject into it.

We have both heard the "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," quip enough to have stopped smiling over it, but, to hear it yelled across the street by Lilly at a couple guys walking hand in hand, well, that makes it "funny" all over again.

When she, for example, refuses to proceed until I tie a shoelace that might be loose might be another occasion for me to see that smile that she got from her mother, on the lips of Chantilly.

It is Sunday afternoon, about an hour later than when I last wrote the same thing above. It is a little less breezy now, with the sun getting ready to set in 2 and a half hours.

I called Lilly pursuant to us walking around and was informed that she wishes to take a nap.

This freed me from any commitment to meet her and covered me in regards to being a gentleman by calling the lady and not making her have to call me. It has probably been wired into her to be "sought after," and I'm not going to try to undo a lifetime of conditioning in her. We have a future together on Martha's Vinyard that I have to consider.

Waiting For Youtube

Now, I am waiting for Youtube to upload another video. This one exceeded the maximum length allowed and I was directed to a page to "verify" my account. This will be good whenever I want to upload 15 minutes or more videos in the future.


15 minutes is a long span of attention to try to exact from anyone to watch a guy play guitar and harmonica and sing, jumping from one song to the next apparently at random, I realize this.

Plus, I haven't listened through the entire 15 minutes for spots that can be cut out, like when I get up and walk over to a guy who had been sitting by the bayou right next to the tree that I like to play under when I got there.

It had been a minor distraction in my mind, keeping me from putting 100% into what I was playing, so I walked over and asked: "Am I bothering you; you were here first?"

To which he had replied: "No, not at all. I'm enjoying it."

This gave me a new distraction in my mind as there was a tendency to want to do "more of the same" kind of music as I had during the first 10 minutes of playing and wondering if it was bothering the guy.

Now, instead of playing for everybody and/or nobody, I had an audience of one. And, I had planned upon just warming up with whatever I started with, and then switching, perhaps drastically, to another "style."

I can understand the pressure that commercial artists must feel after they release some music that sells well, to try to stay in that same vein, and basically do an encore to it.

"I told you I liked the Neil Young you were doing, but then you switched up to some Steely Dan kind of stuff; now you ARE bothering me!" type of thing...

So, more kudos to Elvis Costello, who jettisoned a portion of his fan base with each successive album release by never giving what would amount to an encore to the previous release.

Those songs found their way onto the "bonus" discs that Elvis started to include with the later editions of his albums.

I'm flat broke and should be freaking out, as it is 7 PM. I suppose I might find Ghost playing his...wait a minute...

I think that might have been whom Chantilly was referring to, because Ghost's real name is something like McCovey. Maybe she has a crush on the dredlock wearing black ukelele player who is in his late 20's. That would explain her embarrassment, and her having waited until she was out of her mother's earshot before asking me if I had seen him.

I'm going to have to warn Lilly of my suspicion...