The Already Ripped Apart Pedals

• 65 Dollar Saturday
• Failure To Communicate

I had 2 dollars in my pocket, as I pedaled down Canal Street.

I could be at the Lilly Pad, set up and pluck my first note by 10:50 PM.

The real reason man learned how

to harness fire...

Choosing the Canal Street to Royal Street way, instead of the bike trail (where I had been shot in the face by a paintball from a young black hoodlum, who was even wearing a hood to verify that, about a year and a half ago) meant that I would wind up starting at 11:10 PM.

I had a big 'ol sack of Bobby's medicinal grade weed, and thought that I would sacrifice about 10 minutes, in additional to what would be added by not taking the bike trail, of my time, should I espy David the Water Jug Player, to smoke him up.
I had had 12 dollars when I went to Bobby's.

My previous 2 visits, I had 8 dollars, and then 8 dollars and 72 cents, respectively.

Those visits had been a week apart. "I've come up in the world a whole 72 cents, since last week," I had said the second time, while Bobby sold me a "dime" for a discounted price of 8 dollars each time.

This time, he took the whole 10 bucks, leaving me just 2 dollars to go out with, but also with a big ol' sack of weed.

A Whole Lot Of Shake

It was composed mostly of "shake," which is hard for him to sell at his regular price.

Ol' Daniel is fine with it, though. Daniel uses the analogy of roses to rationalize this.

Specifically, if rose pedals could be smoked up and euphoria gained, and people bought roses, and then gazed at them in rapture over their beauty: "Isn't this the prettiest rose you've ever seen?" before tearing them asunder,  shoving them in a pipe and lighting them up, than why should it be harder to sell the already ripped apart pedals? But it is.

One would have to ask a weed smoker who will only pay full price for buds, and who shakes his head "no" to shake.

So, Bobby was able to give his shake the shake, and in the process give me about a gram and a half of the bud that would be beautiful to look at if it was still intact.

I did indeed see David the Water Jug player.

I greeted him, and, in the ensuing second or two, when in the past 72 such encounters he has followed his greeting with a variation of "Please tell me you've got some weed!" there was awkward silence.

David's bus was due to come in "a couple minutes."

I went along my "regular" route.

There were a couple of butts in the trays behind Hotel Monteleone. I used the opportunity of a stop there to take off the outer two layers of clothing that I was wearing on this 65 degree evening that felt stifling after a 2 mile bike ride, and some vigorous ashtray picking.

Tanya Huang had a pretty big crowd around her at the corner of St. Louis and Royal Streets.

Before I got there, I could hear a loud drum beat coming from her area.

I thought she might have someone banging on one of those cajons (a box about the size of a breadbox, but which gives a bass drum sound when you kick the side, I think, and a pretty realistic sounding snare drum when you smack somewhere else).

I felt an old familiar pang of jealousy, remembering the time when she had a boyfriend of some sort, who played one of them, and how heartsick I felt to see him play along with her at times.

It was piped in music, though.  

Tanya now has a formidable PA speaker on a stand, which is about head height. She controls her background tracks through, of course, some kind of smart phone.
As soon as I get the smart phone that I ordered, I might be able to show photos of her setup.

She apparently has some "music for the masses" loaded into her phone.

I don't know if this is a new thing and a departure from the more classical sounding but not too recognizeable (to me at least) stuff that she has been playing over, since becoming a solo act.

I have ridden by and seen much smaller crowds around her -not much more than fit in the half dozen or so plastic chairs which she brings with her, to provide a seating area, and to further wall herself off and insulate her, perhaps.

The three chord song, along with the basic beat of the drum, of course had me thinking: "I could play that."

I can totally see myself getting the minimal amount of required amplification and plopping myself down where Dorise used to sit and making 100 dollars in an hour and half of playing the chords to such songs as "Easy (Like Sunday Morning)," by Lionel Ritchie and their ilk.
I'm pretty sure we would work well together as I would fill in the opposite side of the brain that Tanya is adept in.
And to think that a simple phone call to Dorise to ask if I could borrow/rent her gear might set that ball into motion. Her Bluebird brand polycarbon fiber or whatever it is guitar is about a $2,500 item, and I could see her hesitating in letting me use that. It's not like I would be playing for more than a couple hours at first, though, and my steel string wouldn't have my fingers bleeding after such a short session; maybe I could just borrow her amp...

I got to the Lilly Pad, set up and did pretty well, being able to get a few groups of people to at least pause.

There was a couple slow dancing about 50 feet away (just out of tipping range) at one point, and there was a young black guy who had thrown money in my jar, telling me "You're working hard."

There were noise issues.

The pedi-cabs that have loud music came and went, the garbage truck made its 11:30 PM stop to grab the half dozen barrels just a ways down from the bar.

I use the noise to practice things, such as playing loudly. Under the din of the trash truck, I might try to see if I can hit the high note in a certain song, before trying it again after the truck leaves.

A person sat down on Lilly's stoop at about 1 AM.

I had played from 11:10 until about 12:30 AM, before deciding to take a "10 minute break," to drink a cup of coffee, perhaps take another few tokes of weed and, hopefully get a second wind.

For, I really had reached the now familiar state of mind of feeling like my brain had been wrung like a towel of all its creative ideas.

It would have been natural to take my milk crate with me to the Quartermaster, in effect calling it a night, but I left it set up and just snapped my spotlight off.
The trip to the Quartermaster (I decided to leave my bike locked to the post and walk there and back) was just what the doctor ordered, for I found that after I had sat back down at about 1:25 AM to continue playing, I had more ideas in my head.

The person, who looked like a lady in her early 20's sat and listened, but didn't say anything. She looked kind of straight ahead. She had a phone with her that she poked at, now and then.

It was hard to determine if she had liked the version of "Imagine," by John Lennon that I did. If there was any reaction from her it was during the substitution of my own lyrics "...but then some whacko shot him with a gun," instead of "...and the world will be as one," during that song.

I decided to do one of my originals, and picked "Her Thigh Said 'Sublime,'" which I thought that I did very well.

It was my thinking this, and the fact that she continued to sit there, not really looking at me, nor acknowledging my saying "Hey, there..." or something, that made me think that she was intending to sit there and, I guess I was thinking not tip me. Then I thought that she didn't like my music, thought it not original at all and was trying to aggressively ignore me, like she was on an ego trip, proud of the fact that she just doesn't care and not giving anyone the time of day as a way of saying "I'm in my own world and you're not welcome there."

I was even wondering if she was thinking about grabbing my tip basket and running off; it was that hard to read any kind of intention at all in her.

She then said softly, and almost humbly: "Am I bothering you by being here...I can move..."

I then lied and said: "Mother Nature calling," which sounded cliche as soon as I had said it.

"I mean, I'm enjoying it, I really am.." she added.

It was at this point that some of the mystery seemed to unravel. A closer look at "her" revealed that it was a trans-sexual guy.

She hadn't wanted to look at me out of fear that I would see that it was really a guy, nor speak to me, for the same reason.

I had indeed been playing for her the way I would have for "any other" young and fairly attractive (except for the Adam's Apple) lady, and I think, in retrospect, that the guy had wanted to have that experience -to be wooed and serenaded by a male musician.

"...and I put money in your basket..." she added, seemingly hurt by my abrupt departure.

I had to keep up the "running to the restroom" ruse, at that point, and so I shoved my stuff in my bag and went off. I had totally mis-read the person, I believe. And I might even now continue to do so -about the tran-sexuality and the reasons for his silence and shyness, and all that.

But, I felt truly bad about it.

I felt worse when I got back to the apartment and discovered that the "last little bit" that I had made after returning for a second set, which included whatever he/she had thrown in there amounted to about 50 dollars, with two twenty dollar bills folded within a dollar having him/her written all over it.

It had been a 65 dollar Saturday night. I'm noticing some kind of sea change coming over me in regards to my being able to feel like I had been a failure on such a lucrative occasion.

I hope she believed me and returns tonight to listen and perhaps talk. I don't know why I hadn't struck up a conversation before going off. Would I have, had I known that she had thrown me 41 bucks before sitting down and, I thought, "aggressively ignoring" me?

Yeah, I would have.

It is Sunday night. Easter Sunday. Thanks, mom, for the card and the money.

Friday night, the lions share of the 11 dollars that I made, on a night when there just weren't a lot of tourists out, came from one black lady.

She had gone to a vehicle that was parked across from me, and had popped the trunk open and put some bags that she was carrying in there. I guess this is a thing that people do; hide whatever they had acquired shopping in the trunk, so that would-be window smashing car burglars don't see it. This had given her enough time to listen to me.

She was dressed like a black lady on a plantation would dress; back in the Gone With The Wind era.

A vividly colored dress, to just below the knees, with a large ribbon tying it together in front of her. It was as is she was one of the players from the Tennessee Williams show that is going on somewhere in the city -somewhere just a couple blocks from where Tennessee lived when he was here, I read in the paper.

She came across and put a dollar in my basket during my harmonica driven version of "Ain't No Sunshine," the Billy Withers song, where I sing "Ain't no sunshine, just in general..." instead of the lyric.

Then, she returned another time with another dollar during "Isn't She Lovely?" by Stevie Wonder, a song that came to mind due to the lovely dress she was wearing.

Then I started improvising a song, which I guess I will call "I Have Nothing," the lyrics of which came from basically whatever I was seeing at the time, such as: "I have nothing against people, who walk down the street. I have nothing against people who poke at their phones...I have nothing AGAINST people who laugh out loud..." etc.

She made 5 trips, total, as evidenced by the 5 one dollar bills that became almost half of what I had made that night.

During her second trip to the basket, along with the dollar she also laid a piece of paper in there. It was a yellowish-brown shade of paper upon which symbols of the moon and the sun and a few other things were, along with an arrow or two, indicating perhaps some motion of the stars and moon.

It is something that I made a point of valuing, rather than throwing away. I had folded it up along with the money that I made. When I got to the apartment, I went to stick it up on my wall, where I stick such things, and wound up hanging it right next to the Easter card that my mom had sent me. The colors blended perfectly.

It was like my moms spirit was able to visit me at the Lilly Pad in the form of a black plantation lady; or that the black lady was a reminder that everything is connected. Your interpretation may vary.

There just seems to be something about things that people give me instead of money and the fact that they should be valued, in the sense of "store your treasure in heaven where neither rust nor moth can destroy them."

Or perhaps it is just this kind of thinking that has been the biggest obstacle in the way of my having a real job, and living a normal life, these past 20 years...

Back To Now

So, I can be set up and playing at the Lilly Pad by 10:15 PM, if I head for there now...Easter Sunday.
Time to put money on the green card and send off for strings and maybe a new harmonica...if I make at least 20 tonight, a new harmonica...and maybe a 12 dollar set of Cleartone strings....