A lot of things have been going on the past few days; at the speed of the Internet, it seems.
Jacob and I had agreed to jam after doing so the day before (Friday), taking advantage of Bob, his guardian, being out of town for the entire weekend.
He is ever present through the cameras, which he can sit in San Antonio, or wherever he was, and monitor, and probably does so, knowing him.
Ever the manager/producer, Jacob had enlisted the help of no less than two drummers and a keyboard player to join us in our session. Out of those, only the "keyboard player" showed up briefly at the big house in Kenner, Louisiana, tickled the ivory's even more briefly, helped himself off of the table full of snack food type stuff which, Bob seems to keep stocked, and then was gone.
But not before looking frantically all over the house for his keys, at a pitch that reached the point of him almost casting an accusation upon Jacob's new friend, whom he met at the Uxi Duxi, when he exclaimed: "Someone's got them!!"
But, as it turns out, the prank of one of Jacob's friends hiding an object of one of the others just for amusement has been played out enough so that his comment was most likely directed at one of them.
The keys wound up being in the bathroom, off camera, and where things might be done which would make someone totally forget their keys.
This left myself and Jacob to jam. He had also been in the company of two other of his friends, named Patrick and Doug.
Both about twenty years of age, Patrick a tall, skinny bespectacled young man, not too far away from the Harry Potter movie actor of the same description, and Doug was a skinny young black man who wore a hoodie, which he pulled over his head half of the time.
How these two became Jacob's friends, are mysteries that can be solved by observing how Jacob, for instance, started having myself over to jam and record music.
I guess the fact that both Jacob and I might wake up on a given morning with the day's goal being to perfect a drum track, made us birds of a feather.
Patrick, I had met after Jacob and I had jammed on Friday, when we picked him up and he rode with us to drop me off, with the two of them continuing on to some party that I really probably wouldn't have felt comfortable at, and since I was still holding out the possibility of going out to busk.
I decided to get to sleep at the decent hour of about 2 AM, rather than busk, the $40 that I had gotten from the plasma place that (Friday) morning having only been dented by a couple cans of cat food and a pack of cigarettes.
I had gotten to the plasma place earlier than ever, arriving there at about 10 AM. A lot of things, I am doing differently lately, I find.
I suspect that this is from having some of the self help dialogues that are on the self hypnosis recordings that I made (for myself) out of the "Awaken The Genius Within," books, sink in and cause me to make different choices then I "always" had been making.
Things have been materializing along the way, making me feel like I am in one of those early "labyrinth" type computer games where you are in a room and there is a lamp, and you type in "light lamp," and the lamp gets lit allowing you to "see a huge wooden door" in front of you, and you just might "knock on door," and then see what happens.
My steps have been similarly guided lately, beginning with, but not limited to, the notification from Jacob earlier in the week about the pending departure of Bob and all the opportunities for creating music that that was a harbinger of.
One time, about 4 years ago now, I blogged about having decided to embark upon a water fast. My plan was to arrive at the Lilly Pad with nothing but a gallon jug of water, no beer, no cigarettes, no weed, no energy drink, just water. On that, the third or fourth day of the fast, my appetite for all those things had diminished to the point where it had only taken a bit of will power to force myself out there, which was helped along by a short prayer for "strength" before I went out.
I didn't have the gallon of spring water, though. Having stayed in the over the first few days of the fast, in order to not go out where there would be temptation until my appetites had been subdued, had depleted my money through cat food, and the first few gallons of it, and I almost decided to not busk for one more night because of not having even the spring water, but decided that I was just looking for an excuse to avoid the ordeal of busking after not having eaten for 4 days.
So, I had said the short prayer, then hopped on my bike and ridden to the Lilly Pad, where the first thing I saw upon my arrival was a full gallon of spring water sitting on the stoop at my right elbow when I play. It hadn't even been opened.
An atheist might say that someone around there reads this blog and knew that I was water fasting and had left the water there for me, or that it was just a coincidence, but...
I mention that because things have been kind of turning out that way lately.
I called my mother this morning, after having dallied almost a week, waiting until I had something to say to her, something important, or when I was in such a good mood that it might be contageous and I might cheer her up.
I just dialed her up on my phone this morning, relying upon myself to think of something to say after she answered.
She told me that she has just mailed off some old photographs of me, when I was younger, that she found when going through, I guess, her chest full of stuff which she might have moved from the last place where she lived and was only now digging through, 15 years later.
That is kind of like the jug of water sitting on Lilly's stoop, as I was just recently lamenting not having any pictures of myself from back then.
So, I had stayed up Thursday night into Friday morning and gone to the plasma place, rather than try to sleep first, and winding up having to shake off the cobwebs and dash across the river before they closed, and put myself in jeopardy of encountering the same bus driver who might speed off rather than allowing me onto the last bus that could get me there on time, as had happened the night before.
That had been a learning experience, after I was surprised to find myself reaching for my phone to call the station and threaten the life of that driver. I think I was able to dissolve that anger in the light of consciousness and through listening to one of the self help dialogues from the "genius within" book.
And then, Jacob and I had a pretty decent recording session, with the only hindrance being that the mix between myself on acoustic guitar and singing was almost being drowned out by Jacob on the electric guitar.
At least for anyone standing in the room, he would be the loudest thing. But the recording told a different story, since, even though I could hardly hear myself, I was singing directly into one microphone and playing into another. So, I almost could have been playing and singing anything and Jacob would have been none the wiser. When he listened back to the recording, though, it would be like I was whispering in his ear, tempting me to throw in lyrics that I knew would amuse him when he mixed the stuff down the next morning.
We have switched from the Tascam 4 track cassette recorder (with DBX noise reduction) to using a USB interface feeding directly into Jacob's laptop and recording digitally on four separate tracks.
We are, in my humble opinion, realizing audio quality comparable to that of, say, Elvis Presley records from the early sixties. We are probably using better equipment. Jacob's cellphone is probably better equipment than what was in whatever studio in Memphis where "That's Alright, Mama" was cut. What a difference fifty years makes...
But, Friday's session revealed me to be a little sloppy on the guitar, since I could barely hear myself, and a little raspy on the vocals, as if I was straining a bit to sing louder, since I could barely hear myself, etc.
That is one of the bad habits that can be cultivated when busking at times when the busker can barely hear himself.
But, being in bed at the early hour of 2 AM, I was well rested when, at around noon, I heard the clang of Jacob's set of keys against my window.
I looked out to see Jacob, Patrick and Doug, all staring gape mouthed at the set of keys which had landed on the ledge outside the window.
While they were boosting one another up so as to retrieve them, I had time to find a pair of socks, grab my guitar and harmonicas, gulp down a shot of kratom and then join them.
I was soon riding "shotgun" with Patrick and Doug in the back seat.
It was a crash course in millennial culture, as Jacob located some music on his phone to be played through the stereo and Patrick and Doug each poked at their own phones in the back seat, Snapchatting with people, trying to line up parties and such.
At one point a guy texted Patrick, whom Patrick wasn't sure he remembered; no problem: "Open up Facetime, so I can see you," he said. Seconds later the texter's face was on his phone, he recognized him, and life went on. Life in 2018 A.D.
I thought that the three had met through the Baptist church that Jacob attends, which is somewhat of a glue keeping Jacob adhered to Bob's patronage, I would guess, since Bob hosts a Christian radio show on 800 AM in New Orleans, if you're ever in the area and could use some of that old fashioned religion.
It was with this in mind that I rode around with Jacob and his two friends seemingly cruising around Kenner at random while they tried to line up all the participants in what was to be a grand jam at the house.
Snapchat messages are streamed and only appear briefly before disappearing forever into the ether, and so that is the method of choice for locating drug dealers, and Patrick only had to post "Does anyone have any mushrooms for sale?" without fear of being traced, and someone with mushrooms for sale was able to answer likewise, and meet us at the Wendy's while Jacob and his friends scoffed down fries, so as to have some food on the stomach because "shrooms" can be upsetting on an empty one.
Patrick and Doug had began to insist that Jacob stop there. Jacob acquiesced with hardly a sign of perturbation. This had caused me to question, for the first time, exactly what the relationship between them all was like. Was Jacob a push-over whom they were taking advantage of?
Then, when we were sitting in Jacob's car, after he had gone inside the Wendy's to get the fries, Patrick, at one point said "Jacob said that he was out of twenties, but he was lying because he has some right here," before reaching into the console and retrieving a small wad of "twenties," which he took into his possession.
Did Patrick just steal Jacob's money, I wondered?
Patrick and Doug shortly thereafter left the car, saying that they were going to see what was taking Jacob so long, as something seemed to be.
I wondered if they were going to take off with his money and then I would learn that Jacob had been swindled by them and they he really didn't know them as well as he seemed to. They were so incredibly at ease with each other, that this didn't seem possible, but were they like the spoiled brats that are so unbothered by any material concerns that they had an "easy come, easy go" attitude and knew that Jacob would just have to hit up Bob for more money and he would be fine?
But, they all came back to the car, with the money that Patrick found having been returned to Jacob, and I began to rest assured that the friends were as "tight" as they seemed to be. Even though it was only Jacob's third time meeting Doug, the young black man who wore a hoodie.
Patrick had been barred from Bob's residence, not because he broke the solar lights that lined the sidewalk in front of the house, but because he knew who did, but wouldn't divulge the information, making him just as guilty in Bob's eyes, as the perpetrator.
Jacob has known Patrick since high school, which I keep having to remind myself was only like 4 years ago.
So, the two of them had to sneak in through the back yard to avoid the camera, and then to stay in the kitchen the whole time they were in the house, or to hide in a bedroom, out of lens view.
It all made for a magical mystery occasion, and we were able to record some good music, of the kind of rowdy sort initially, and then a much more focused version between just Jacob and I after we had left Patrick and Doug to their next adventure, and then returned to Bob's house around 11 PM.
Now, it is Sunday afternoon, I am blogging instead of watching football, and now Jacob is here with me at the Uxi Duxi, and has just spoken with Justice, a drummer and we are planning to do another jam in a little while. Soon some of the results will appear here, and I will at last have enough material to put at least an "EP" together. Now, for the cover art....
 |
| The morning after... |
Jacob and I had agreed to jam after doing so the day before (Friday), taking advantage of Bob, his guardian, being out of town for the entire weekend.
He is ever present through the cameras, which he can sit in San Antonio, or wherever he was, and monitor, and probably does so, knowing him.
Ever the manager/producer, Jacob had enlisted the help of no less than two drummers and a keyboard player to join us in our session. Out of those, only the "keyboard player" showed up briefly at the big house in Kenner, Louisiana, tickled the ivory's even more briefly, helped himself off of the table full of snack food type stuff which, Bob seems to keep stocked, and then was gone.
But not before looking frantically all over the house for his keys, at a pitch that reached the point of him almost casting an accusation upon Jacob's new friend, whom he met at the Uxi Duxi, when he exclaimed: "Someone's got them!!"
But, as it turns out, the prank of one of Jacob's friends hiding an object of one of the others just for amusement has been played out enough so that his comment was most likely directed at one of them.
The keys wound up being in the bathroom, off camera, and where things might be done which would make someone totally forget their keys.
This left myself and Jacob to jam. He had also been in the company of two other of his friends, named Patrick and Doug.
Both about twenty years of age, Patrick a tall, skinny bespectacled young man, not too far away from the Harry Potter movie actor of the same description, and Doug was a skinny young black man who wore a hoodie, which he pulled over his head half of the time.
How these two became Jacob's friends, are mysteries that can be solved by observing how Jacob, for instance, started having myself over to jam and record music.
I guess the fact that both Jacob and I might wake up on a given morning with the day's goal being to perfect a drum track, made us birds of a feather.
Patrick, I had met after Jacob and I had jammed on Friday, when we picked him up and he rode with us to drop me off, with the two of them continuing on to some party that I really probably wouldn't have felt comfortable at, and since I was still holding out the possibility of going out to busk.
I decided to get to sleep at the decent hour of about 2 AM, rather than busk, the $40 that I had gotten from the plasma place that (Friday) morning having only been dented by a couple cans of cat food and a pack of cigarettes.
I had gotten to the plasma place earlier than ever, arriving there at about 10 AM. A lot of things, I am doing differently lately, I find.
I suspect that this is from having some of the self help dialogues that are on the self hypnosis recordings that I made (for myself) out of the "Awaken The Genius Within," books, sink in and cause me to make different choices then I "always" had been making.
Things have been materializing along the way, making me feel like I am in one of those early "labyrinth" type computer games where you are in a room and there is a lamp, and you type in "light lamp," and the lamp gets lit allowing you to "see a huge wooden door" in front of you, and you just might "knock on door," and then see what happens.
My steps have been similarly guided lately, beginning with, but not limited to, the notification from Jacob earlier in the week about the pending departure of Bob and all the opportunities for creating music that that was a harbinger of.
One time, about 4 years ago now, I blogged about having decided to embark upon a water fast. My plan was to arrive at the Lilly Pad with nothing but a gallon jug of water, no beer, no cigarettes, no weed, no energy drink, just water. On that, the third or fourth day of the fast, my appetite for all those things had diminished to the point where it had only taken a bit of will power to force myself out there, which was helped along by a short prayer for "strength" before I went out.
I didn't have the gallon of spring water, though. Having stayed in the over the first few days of the fast, in order to not go out where there would be temptation until my appetites had been subdued, had depleted my money through cat food, and the first few gallons of it, and I almost decided to not busk for one more night because of not having even the spring water, but decided that I was just looking for an excuse to avoid the ordeal of busking after not having eaten for 4 days.
So, I had said the short prayer, then hopped on my bike and ridden to the Lilly Pad, where the first thing I saw upon my arrival was a full gallon of spring water sitting on the stoop at my right elbow when I play. It hadn't even been opened.
An atheist might say that someone around there reads this blog and knew that I was water fasting and had left the water there for me, or that it was just a coincidence, but...
I mention that because things have been kind of turning out that way lately.
I called my mother this morning, after having dallied almost a week, waiting until I had something to say to her, something important, or when I was in such a good mood that it might be contageous and I might cheer her up.
I just dialed her up on my phone this morning, relying upon myself to think of something to say after she answered.
She told me that she has just mailed off some old photographs of me, when I was younger, that she found when going through, I guess, her chest full of stuff which she might have moved from the last place where she lived and was only now digging through, 15 years later.
That is kind of like the jug of water sitting on Lilly's stoop, as I was just recently lamenting not having any pictures of myself from back then.
So, I had stayed up Thursday night into Friday morning and gone to the plasma place, rather than try to sleep first, and winding up having to shake off the cobwebs and dash across the river before they closed, and put myself in jeopardy of encountering the same bus driver who might speed off rather than allowing me onto the last bus that could get me there on time, as had happened the night before.
That had been a learning experience, after I was surprised to find myself reaching for my phone to call the station and threaten the life of that driver. I think I was able to dissolve that anger in the light of consciousness and through listening to one of the self help dialogues from the "genius within" book.
And then, Jacob and I had a pretty decent recording session, with the only hindrance being that the mix between myself on acoustic guitar and singing was almost being drowned out by Jacob on the electric guitar.
At least for anyone standing in the room, he would be the loudest thing. But the recording told a different story, since, even though I could hardly hear myself, I was singing directly into one microphone and playing into another. So, I almost could have been playing and singing anything and Jacob would have been none the wiser. When he listened back to the recording, though, it would be like I was whispering in his ear, tempting me to throw in lyrics that I knew would amuse him when he mixed the stuff down the next morning.
We have switched from the Tascam 4 track cassette recorder (with DBX noise reduction) to using a USB interface feeding directly into Jacob's laptop and recording digitally on four separate tracks.
We are, in my humble opinion, realizing audio quality comparable to that of, say, Elvis Presley records from the early sixties. We are probably using better equipment. Jacob's cellphone is probably better equipment than what was in whatever studio in Memphis where "That's Alright, Mama" was cut. What a difference fifty years makes...
But, Friday's session revealed me to be a little sloppy on the guitar, since I could barely hear myself, and a little raspy on the vocals, as if I was straining a bit to sing louder, since I could barely hear myself, etc.
That is one of the bad habits that can be cultivated when busking at times when the busker can barely hear himself.
But, being in bed at the early hour of 2 AM, I was well rested when, at around noon, I heard the clang of Jacob's set of keys against my window.
I looked out to see Jacob, Patrick and Doug, all staring gape mouthed at the set of keys which had landed on the ledge outside the window.
While they were boosting one another up so as to retrieve them, I had time to find a pair of socks, grab my guitar and harmonicas, gulp down a shot of kratom and then join them.
I was soon riding "shotgun" with Patrick and Doug in the back seat.
It was a crash course in millennial culture, as Jacob located some music on his phone to be played through the stereo and Patrick and Doug each poked at their own phones in the back seat, Snapchatting with people, trying to line up parties and such.
At one point a guy texted Patrick, whom Patrick wasn't sure he remembered; no problem: "Open up Facetime, so I can see you," he said. Seconds later the texter's face was on his phone, he recognized him, and life went on. Life in 2018 A.D.
I thought that the three had met through the Baptist church that Jacob attends, which is somewhat of a glue keeping Jacob adhered to Bob's patronage, I would guess, since Bob hosts a Christian radio show on 800 AM in New Orleans, if you're ever in the area and could use some of that old fashioned religion.
It was with this in mind that I rode around with Jacob and his two friends seemingly cruising around Kenner at random while they tried to line up all the participants in what was to be a grand jam at the house.
Snapchat messages are streamed and only appear briefly before disappearing forever into the ether, and so that is the method of choice for locating drug dealers, and Patrick only had to post "Does anyone have any mushrooms for sale?" without fear of being traced, and someone with mushrooms for sale was able to answer likewise, and meet us at the Wendy's while Jacob and his friends scoffed down fries, so as to have some food on the stomach because "shrooms" can be upsetting on an empty one.
Patrick and Doug had began to insist that Jacob stop there. Jacob acquiesced with hardly a sign of perturbation. This had caused me to question, for the first time, exactly what the relationship between them all was like. Was Jacob a push-over whom they were taking advantage of?
Then, when we were sitting in Jacob's car, after he had gone inside the Wendy's to get the fries, Patrick, at one point said "Jacob said that he was out of twenties, but he was lying because he has some right here," before reaching into the console and retrieving a small wad of "twenties," which he took into his possession.
Did Patrick just steal Jacob's money, I wondered?
Patrick and Doug shortly thereafter left the car, saying that they were going to see what was taking Jacob so long, as something seemed to be.
I wondered if they were going to take off with his money and then I would learn that Jacob had been swindled by them and they he really didn't know them as well as he seemed to. They were so incredibly at ease with each other, that this didn't seem possible, but were they like the spoiled brats that are so unbothered by any material concerns that they had an "easy come, easy go" attitude and knew that Jacob would just have to hit up Bob for more money and he would be fine?
But, they all came back to the car, with the money that Patrick found having been returned to Jacob, and I began to rest assured that the friends were as "tight" as they seemed to be. Even though it was only Jacob's third time meeting Doug, the young black man who wore a hoodie.
Patrick had been barred from Bob's residence, not because he broke the solar lights that lined the sidewalk in front of the house, but because he knew who did, but wouldn't divulge the information, making him just as guilty in Bob's eyes, as the perpetrator.
Jacob has known Patrick since high school, which I keep having to remind myself was only like 4 years ago.
So, the two of them had to sneak in through the back yard to avoid the camera, and then to stay in the kitchen the whole time they were in the house, or to hide in a bedroom, out of lens view.
It all made for a magical mystery occasion, and we were able to record some good music, of the kind of rowdy sort initially, and then a much more focused version between just Jacob and I after we had left Patrick and Doug to their next adventure, and then returned to Bob's house around 11 PM.
Now, it is Sunday afternoon, I am blogging instead of watching football, and now Jacob is here with me at the Uxi Duxi, and has just spoken with Justice, a drummer and we are planning to do another jam in a little while. Soon some of the results will appear here, and I will at last have enough material to put at least an "EP" together. Now, for the cover art....
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments, to me are like deflated helium balloons with notes tied to them, found on my back porch in the morning...