I couldn't figure out why my energy level dropped, as if off the edge of a cliff, at 11:03 PM last (Friday) night.
I wound up walking to The Quartermaster, leaving my bike tied to the post across from the stoop, thinking that the extra time plus the exercise might give me a second wind, and have me chomping at the bit to play more.
I wound up sitting on a step near the store, closing my eyes, and going into a state of mind which was not quite sleep (I managed to rock slightly or move my fingers, so no skeezers would investigate whether I might have nodded off and left something unguarded, but my mind was somewhere else in the universe).
I recalled Ekhart Tolle, near the end of the book I just finished, talking about the 3 "modalities" of Enjoyment, Enthusiasm and Surrender, and his advice that, if you are not enjoying what you are doing and are not enthusiastic about it, then stop doing it.
The third modality deals with situations where you cannot stop what you are doing, perhaps because if you do, then the tire won't get changed and you won't get your wife, who is in labor, to the hospital, or something. I suppose, if I absolutely had to make x amount of money, then I would have to surrender to the situation -playing a Bob Dylan song that I have no idea of the meaning of, and trying to play it like I mean it- and make that my life's purpose, in that particular moment.
I became immensely absorbed in just sitting there with my eyes closed and my mind pretty much blank, numbed by having played pretty hard for an hour and a half, netting only 20 dollars in the process.
I think I was "totally present" in that moment, and had no enthusiasm for going back to busk more, and had taken a break because I had stopped enjoying what I was doing. I began to value the meditative moment more than whatever money might have come from going back.
The vibes that I got from the people (and there were a good number of them still out) was that they were not tippers.
Either from some country where the idea of tipping is foreign to them, or blissfully ignorant that the musician's only source of income is what he is doing, or just being broke, and walking Bourbon Street "just looking."
Either way, it wasn't until this morning, after having slept until my customary time of 1:30 PM, that it occurred to me that it was probably the 95 degree heat of the night that ultimately made me feel dopey, aided only slightly by the apple juice only diet.
I had initially blamed it on just the juice fast that I was one day into.
That had made me feel slightly weaker and more prone to dizziness upon standing up, but it hadn't slowed my music playing down at all, it seemed, as I tore through my repertoire for an hour and a half, with sweat running down my face, before falling off the edge of the cliff, energy-wise. It just wasn't there, and I was starting to feel anger towards the smart asses who will invariably say: "Thanks for playing," but not tip, thinking that is funny, and angry at the people who weren't even there, for not being there, I guess.
I was singing "Tears In Heaven," by Eric Clapton, at one point, through which I was constantly distracted by thinking about the Eckhart Tolle book and its message that "heaven" is something that can only be realized in the present moment, an can be precluded by a person's clinging to the notion of a future heaven or hell.
So, it actually became pointless, and therefore, painful, to be singing about this "heaven" that Eric Clapton was probably talking about, where you float up to after you die, and become "liberated" from your body, all the while not believing in the concept, at a philosophical level.
So, why perform another guy's song that you don't believe in, I reasoned, before switching between a few of my own, looking for something that I was indeed believing in at the moment, but drawing blanks. Time to take a fifteen minute break.
This is the second day of the juice fast, and I am feeling the to-be-expected light-headed-ness, and physical weakness of that day.
My sense of smell has become acute and even the Pizza Hut that I walked past earlier smelled delicious. What say's "You're on the verge of starvation" like their grease bombs smelling appetizing, I ask?
And I am repeating the foibles of the last time I fasted by sneaking things like coffee and tobacco and, right now a high-powered energy drink, to go with the one, not two, shot of kratom that I am sipping.
"Nothing but apple juice every hour and spring water on the half hours, until a gallon of each has been consumed, for three days straight and then nothing but spring water for three more," is the recipe for the fast. Going past the sixth day on water alone could probably not be recommended by Doctor Christopher, due to legal issues. There might be rare individuals that would be harmed by this, so, in recognition of them, only 3 days of water only are prescribed.
Arguably, there are certain vitamins, like vitamin C, which don't stay in the body for more than 3 days, and so the water faster, at one point, runs out of that vitamin. Of course his body is also burning any cancerous cells for fuel that he might have in his body, so there is the trade-off.
Most likely, tomorrow, I will be able to shrug off the urge for a puff or two of tobacco, skip coffee and not come to the Uxi Duxi. I will feel too weak to go out and busk, but will probably keep putting one foot in front of the other until I am at the Lilly Pad, where I will probably play quite well, looking at the tips that go into my jar disconnectedly, not seeing them as a vehicle for putting food in the stomach or a cigarette in the mouth, or kratom...
I have already entered the "cleaning stage" of the fast, having the acuity to suddenly become aware of the odor of Harold's litter box and to want my apartment to be an outward reflection of the inner state. My tongue is also yellowish white as whatever toxins are being flushed out of my body through it are. It's kind of a Yellow Borneo kratom hue, now that I think of it...
As far as going out to play tonight, I realize that the ninety degree temperatures and the humidity, plus the "air quality" compromising levels of ozone that my smartphone warned me about, is probably going to make it so an hour and a half should be the extent of my playing time. So, I might as well choose the hour and a half starting at 11 PM.
If I have a couple sitting on Lilly's stoop that I am entertaining when quitting time rolls around, I'll be able to make an exception, and go longer.
Other than that, the second one of the songs that I am recording, "Hubert's Trip," is only waiting upon vocals, to be sung at the spot outside the University Medical Center on Canal Street.
It's easier for me to sing when only random strangers are in the area, rather than at home in my apartment.
There is a song by some friends of mine in Massachusetts whom I haven't seen in almost 30 years, called: "The Enemy Is In Your Bed," and it basically deals with the fact that, a person's "real" battle to achieve peace of mind hinges more upon their intimate relationships, rather than some enemy in the field, who is wearing different insignia than you.
The enemy is in your bed. Or your apartment building.
It is the people in my building who are the last one's that I could ever break my guitar out to try to entertain, beset by all kinds of negative thoughts as I would be while doing it.
"Are they going to realize that I am a good enough musician that I must be out there making enough to put me in a position to be able to come back home and share the wealth?
Will entertaining them make me feel like I am casting pearls before swine in the sense that my more thought provoking or clever lyrics are going to go over their heads?
Am I afraid to show my more vulnerable and sensitive side, for fear that they will interpret it as weakness upon my part and think things like: "If I steal his bike, he's just gonna forgive me and say a prayer for me, but I got nothin' to worry about otherwise?
And that is what I wound up referring to last night when this guy came along, wearing a tie dyed shirt and carrying a guitar case.
He kind of passed by me with an air of, I'm better than you because I have a gig in a club on Bourbon Street, or so I thought.
I played my best, and kind of goofed around a bit.
He walked over and put a dollar in my basket, told me that he played at the Tropical Isle club, I think it was, and then told me that he thought that I had a lot of balls to be able to play on the street, and that "one night," he was going to try it himself.
He visibly became nervous right around the time I was considering telling him to break his guitar out, and we would do a song together, as if being able to read my mind.
If he is the same guy who used to play at that club the last time I walked past it, 3 years ago now, then he is an excellent musician; one who is scared shitless to do what I do almost every night. I had to smile about that.
Then I explained to him how, my particular dragon rears its head when I am home at my apartment. "I always think that my neighbors are going to think that I'm singing about them, and that makes me too guarded and impedes the flow of my music. Out here, I know that no random tourists are going to come over and punch me in the mouth, because the piece of shit that I am singing about who was a roommate of mine 15 years ago was so much like they are that I must have written it about them..." The enemy is in your bed.
"Plus, you don't have an amp," he added.
I interpreted that to mean that he saw an amp as something that the musician can kind of cower behind, letting the sheer volume of it do most of the work of entertaining. Crank up the amp nice and loud and then just hit a C major chord and let it ring...sounds good, eh? type of thing...
So, "Hubert's Trip," a song I wrote when I was in college (mastering the English langwedge) is only waiting to have it's correct verses sung in the right order, before it will be ready to be put on a data stick and carried with me on my trip, for, if and when, I encounter Hubert.
He was working at an auction house and making something like twenty bucks an hour when I last saw him a dozen years ago. He was still living in his parent's house, in exchange for yard work and gardening, and knowing him, putting most of his weekly 600 dollar checks in the bank. He is the same guy I blogged about who spent only 90 dollars over the entire ten weeks of the summer of '88, saving the rest to get him through the next year of college, as an art major.
It is easy to imagine him having paid cash for a 200 thousand dollar property maybe just a few years after I last saw him. We don't keep in touch because, as far as I know, he hasn't come up to speed with Facebook or anything yet, and the last time I wanted to contact him, I had to e-mail the message to Skinner's Auction House, in Bolton, Massachusetts.
He was talking about buying a Victorian style house somewhere that needed some restoration, doing said restoration, and then turning it into a place where artists and musicians could live at reasonable rates.
I wound up sitting on a step near the store, closing my eyes, and going into a state of mind which was not quite sleep (I managed to rock slightly or move my fingers, so no skeezers would investigate whether I might have nodded off and left something unguarded, but my mind was somewhere else in the universe).
I recalled Ekhart Tolle, near the end of the book I just finished, talking about the 3 "modalities" of Enjoyment, Enthusiasm and Surrender, and his advice that, if you are not enjoying what you are doing and are not enthusiastic about it, then stop doing it.
The third modality deals with situations where you cannot stop what you are doing, perhaps because if you do, then the tire won't get changed and you won't get your wife, who is in labor, to the hospital, or something. I suppose, if I absolutely had to make x amount of money, then I would have to surrender to the situation -playing a Bob Dylan song that I have no idea of the meaning of, and trying to play it like I mean it- and make that my life's purpose, in that particular moment.
I became immensely absorbed in just sitting there with my eyes closed and my mind pretty much blank, numbed by having played pretty hard for an hour and a half, netting only 20 dollars in the process.
I think I was "totally present" in that moment, and had no enthusiasm for going back to busk more, and had taken a break because I had stopped enjoying what I was doing. I began to value the meditative moment more than whatever money might have come from going back.
The vibes that I got from the people (and there were a good number of them still out) was that they were not tippers.
Either from some country where the idea of tipping is foreign to them, or blissfully ignorant that the musician's only source of income is what he is doing, or just being broke, and walking Bourbon Street "just looking."
Either way, it wasn't until this morning, after having slept until my customary time of 1:30 PM, that it occurred to me that it was probably the 95 degree heat of the night that ultimately made me feel dopey, aided only slightly by the apple juice only diet.
I had initially blamed it on just the juice fast that I was one day into.
That had made me feel slightly weaker and more prone to dizziness upon standing up, but it hadn't slowed my music playing down at all, it seemed, as I tore through my repertoire for an hour and a half, with sweat running down my face, before falling off the edge of the cliff, energy-wise. It just wasn't there, and I was starting to feel anger towards the smart asses who will invariably say: "Thanks for playing," but not tip, thinking that is funny, and angry at the people who weren't even there, for not being there, I guess.
I was singing "Tears In Heaven," by Eric Clapton, at one point, through which I was constantly distracted by thinking about the Eckhart Tolle book and its message that "heaven" is something that can only be realized in the present moment, an can be precluded by a person's clinging to the notion of a future heaven or hell.
So, it actually became pointless, and therefore, painful, to be singing about this "heaven" that Eric Clapton was probably talking about, where you float up to after you die, and become "liberated" from your body, all the while not believing in the concept, at a philosophical level.
So, why perform another guy's song that you don't believe in, I reasoned, before switching between a few of my own, looking for something that I was indeed believing in at the moment, but drawing blanks. Time to take a fifteen minute break.
This is the second day of the juice fast, and I am feeling the to-be-expected light-headed-ness, and physical weakness of that day.
My sense of smell has become acute and even the Pizza Hut that I walked past earlier smelled delicious. What say's "You're on the verge of starvation" like their grease bombs smelling appetizing, I ask?
And I am repeating the foibles of the last time I fasted by sneaking things like coffee and tobacco and, right now a high-powered energy drink, to go with the one, not two, shot of kratom that I am sipping.
"Nothing but apple juice every hour and spring water on the half hours, until a gallon of each has been consumed, for three days straight and then nothing but spring water for three more," is the recipe for the fast. Going past the sixth day on water alone could probably not be recommended by Doctor Christopher, due to legal issues. There might be rare individuals that would be harmed by this, so, in recognition of them, only 3 days of water only are prescribed.
Arguably, there are certain vitamins, like vitamin C, which don't stay in the body for more than 3 days, and so the water faster, at one point, runs out of that vitamin. Of course his body is also burning any cancerous cells for fuel that he might have in his body, so there is the trade-off.
Most likely, tomorrow, I will be able to shrug off the urge for a puff or two of tobacco, skip coffee and not come to the Uxi Duxi. I will feel too weak to go out and busk, but will probably keep putting one foot in front of the other until I am at the Lilly Pad, where I will probably play quite well, looking at the tips that go into my jar disconnectedly, not seeing them as a vehicle for putting food in the stomach or a cigarette in the mouth, or kratom...
I have already entered the "cleaning stage" of the fast, having the acuity to suddenly become aware of the odor of Harold's litter box and to want my apartment to be an outward reflection of the inner state. My tongue is also yellowish white as whatever toxins are being flushed out of my body through it are. It's kind of a Yellow Borneo kratom hue, now that I think of it...
As far as going out to play tonight, I realize that the ninety degree temperatures and the humidity, plus the "air quality" compromising levels of ozone that my smartphone warned me about, is probably going to make it so an hour and a half should be the extent of my playing time. So, I might as well choose the hour and a half starting at 11 PM.
If I have a couple sitting on Lilly's stoop that I am entertaining when quitting time rolls around, I'll be able to make an exception, and go longer.
Other than that, the second one of the songs that I am recording, "Hubert's Trip," is only waiting upon vocals, to be sung at the spot outside the University Medical Center on Canal Street.
It's easier for me to sing when only random strangers are in the area, rather than at home in my apartment.
There is a song by some friends of mine in Massachusetts whom I haven't seen in almost 30 years, called: "The Enemy Is In Your Bed," and it basically deals with the fact that, a person's "real" battle to achieve peace of mind hinges more upon their intimate relationships, rather than some enemy in the field, who is wearing different insignia than you.
The enemy is in your bed. Or your apartment building.
It is the people in my building who are the last one's that I could ever break my guitar out to try to entertain, beset by all kinds of negative thoughts as I would be while doing it.
"Are they going to realize that I am a good enough musician that I must be out there making enough to put me in a position to be able to come back home and share the wealth?
Will entertaining them make me feel like I am casting pearls before swine in the sense that my more thought provoking or clever lyrics are going to go over their heads?
Am I afraid to show my more vulnerable and sensitive side, for fear that they will interpret it as weakness upon my part and think things like: "If I steal his bike, he's just gonna forgive me and say a prayer for me, but I got nothin' to worry about otherwise?
And that is what I wound up referring to last night when this guy came along, wearing a tie dyed shirt and carrying a guitar case.
He kind of passed by me with an air of, I'm better than you because I have a gig in a club on Bourbon Street, or so I thought.
I played my best, and kind of goofed around a bit.
He walked over and put a dollar in my basket, told me that he played at the Tropical Isle club, I think it was, and then told me that he thought that I had a lot of balls to be able to play on the street, and that "one night," he was going to try it himself.
He visibly became nervous right around the time I was considering telling him to break his guitar out, and we would do a song together, as if being able to read my mind.
If he is the same guy who used to play at that club the last time I walked past it, 3 years ago now, then he is an excellent musician; one who is scared shitless to do what I do almost every night. I had to smile about that.
Then I explained to him how, my particular dragon rears its head when I am home at my apartment. "I always think that my neighbors are going to think that I'm singing about them, and that makes me too guarded and impedes the flow of my music. Out here, I know that no random tourists are going to come over and punch me in the mouth, because the piece of shit that I am singing about who was a roommate of mine 15 years ago was so much like they are that I must have written it about them..." The enemy is in your bed.
"Plus, you don't have an amp," he added.
I interpreted that to mean that he saw an amp as something that the musician can kind of cower behind, letting the sheer volume of it do most of the work of entertaining. Crank up the amp nice and loud and then just hit a C major chord and let it ring...sounds good, eh? type of thing...
So, "Hubert's Trip," a song I wrote when I was in college (mastering the English langwedge) is only waiting to have it's correct verses sung in the right order, before it will be ready to be put on a data stick and carried with me on my trip, for, if and when, I encounter Hubert.
He was working at an auction house and making something like twenty bucks an hour when I last saw him a dozen years ago. He was still living in his parent's house, in exchange for yard work and gardening, and knowing him, putting most of his weekly 600 dollar checks in the bank. He is the same guy I blogged about who spent only 90 dollars over the entire ten weeks of the summer of '88, saving the rest to get him through the next year of college, as an art major.
It is easy to imagine him having paid cash for a 200 thousand dollar property maybe just a few years after I last saw him. We don't keep in touch because, as far as I know, he hasn't come up to speed with Facebook or anything yet, and the last time I wanted to contact him, I had to e-mail the message to Skinner's Auction House, in Bolton, Massachusetts.
He was talking about buying a Victorian style house somewhere that needed some restoration, doing said restoration, and then turning it into a place where artists and musicians could live at reasonable rates.
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