21 Dollars In An Hour And A Half

It was slightly before 10 PM on that Saturday night, as I pulled up to the post where I lock my bike, where it is in sight from the Lilly Pad about half the time, depending upon what kind of vehicle is parked in front of it. I can usually see a handlebar sticking up over the top of a small car or a tire or two showing under the body of a jacked up type vehicle, like a Jeep.

There were a couple people sitting on Lilly's other stoop, the one I don't play at, but none at my spot.
This had been a concern to me, because of having taken so much time off recently due to cold weather; and being a spineless coward when it came to braving it; in addition to other excuses that I had made to myself.

Wanting to get up bright and early the next day to go sell plasma was a good one. Sure, by not playing for three hours and making what has amounted to, at times, to over 2 hundred dollars, I will get the jump on the swarm of people wanting to sell their plasma, and I will be back on this side of the river with that 25 dollars, lickity split; good plan...(loser!)

But, Shakespeare once wrote: "To thine own self be true" and so I am calling a spade a spade...did he write that too? hmm...

I set up and began to tune, as I watched a good amount of tourists milling about, and began to wonder how much such action I have been missing out on by arriving there much later on previous nights than the 9:50 PM when I plucked my first note.

My goal was to force myself to play for 3 hours.

After 2 hours, I had put two five dollar bills and a one in my pocket, leaving three in the basket, and had packed up to go get coffee at The Quartermaster. I was struggling with the emotion of feeling like I had nothing else to play, and that there had been no reason for playing the last few songs that I had.
"Do people really want to hear the acid inspired lyrics of The Grateful Dead, such as "Crazy cat peeking through a lace bandana like a one-eyed Cheshire, like a diamond-eyed jack?" I had wondered.
At times like those, I am learning to just focus upon some other aspect of the music and not even think of the lyrics, maybe by playing some mind game with myself.
I have blogged about one of my favorites of those which has been to imagine that the window on the third floor of one of the houses across the street from me opens into the bedroom of a beautiful young lady who is reclined upon her bed in a peaceful repose at the border of slumber land and that the acid inspired lyrics are ushering her into a wonderful dream state, painting pictures for her and taking her on a journey to the astral plane.

Lately, and I'm suspecting this is a result of the "self-help dialogues" that I havve been hypnotizing myself with, out of the "Awaken The Genius" book, I have started to apply a new strategy.

Oh, look; you can add one to your cart for cheap!!

It involves looking around at the tourists who are walking by.

Not in the sad puppy eyed way of the skeezer, but just as anyone might who was sitting there people watching rather than busking.

As I become more comfortable with playing music kind of unconsciously, it does free me to just look around as I play and let my finger go on auto-pilot.

One of the self help dialogues has to do with finding the right job for oneself.

So, you fold a piece of paper 4 ways and then, in one square write down the things that you would want in "the ideal job."

 Mine was something like:

• -to be doing something creative
• to be creating something enduring and meaningful
• -to feel uninhibited
• -to be able to use my sense of humor
• -to work with like minded people

Then you fold the paper so you can't see your answers, I guess, and write down your responses for what you are looking for in "the ideal relationship," "the ideal life," and "the ideal hobby."

You then unfold the paper and look to see how many answers appeared more than once, and you circle them.

Mine were just about the same for all four categories, with perhaps "a nice tight ass" appended to one of them.

Then the hypnotized person is asked, via a recording of her own voice, how her present job is serving her, and how she is serving it?

Then, it becomes an exercise of visualizing oneself as having found that ideal job, which, incidentally would also make an great hobby and a great life and could be seen as like being in a relationship with it, and then, at the count of five, coming back into the room, fully awake and feeling great.

That particular exercise gave me the sense that I had already done most of the legwork in that regard and had, in fact, found just about the ideal job for myself, as a busker. If it isn't serving me well enough financially, then that is just because I'm not putting in enough hours doing it.

But, having gotten to the Lilly Pad at an earlier time made me feel like I was re-establishing my presence there. Lilly came by and gave me a hug at probably around 10:30 PM. How many of those have I missed out on by arriving late?

After I took a coffee break, I was ready to go back to playing at around 12:15 AM, which I did, and had added 7 more dollars and brought the total to 21 over the next half hour.

One particular guy, who said his name was Warren, listened for a while and dropped a five dollar bill in the basket. He then kind of stood there, apparently waiting for me to play another song, rather than wanting to chat. He said he was a beginning guitar student. Tourists can be divided into two groups. There are the ones that are kind of hoping you will stop playing to give them a chance to talk to you, perhaps ask you a question like "How long have you been playing?" and then there are the ones like Warren, who wanted to watch my fingers on the fret board.

He said he liked the rendition of "Stairway To Heaven," that I played, even though I was taking a lot of liberties with the arrangement, mismatching verses so that the "bustle in your hedgerow," wasn't "a spring clean for the May Queen," but that there was "still time to change the road you're on," which was good...

I demonstrated to him that I actually did know the original version, by playing the signature opening to it, by finger picking.

"Yeah, being out here, I've kind of shied away from fingerpicking stuff in favor of stuff that can be played louder with the pick; it's a matter of volume," I told him.
He left me another five dollar bill before he left. He said he was from St. Louis, and we chatted a bit about cities that are on rivers after I had proffered to him my theory that all of the failed men who had shot their wad in one city or another and who might be on the run from their past, have drifted down the Mississippi River to start afresh in new places, and who failed afresh (because a leopard can't change its spots; and because wherever you go, there you are) and who then drifted down some more, because being shiftless people they would naturally take the easiest way out of the screwed up life they have made for themselves, and would allow the river to carry them away to a better life; have all wound up in New Orleans, because there was nothing past it except the Gulf of Mexico. This explained the preponderance of rejectamentia seen drifting around the Crescent City, I told him.

He seemed to be amused and enjoying the conversation, but kept glancing back at the guitar neck, so that was when I played the Zeppelin song.

Then, shortly before 1 PM, along came a couple of jerks.

First, up walked a guy who was dressed rather well in dinner jacket type of garb. He sat down on the stoop and listened. He had a strong accent when he spoke, perhaps he was French.

Then, to my left, and too close to my backpack for my comfort sat a raggedy looking skeezer.
The well dressed guy then wanted to play my guitar.
I told him that I wanted to try to make some money with the guitar. This was his cue to throw maybe five or ten bucks in the basket, but he instead kept insisting upon playing the guitar.
So I asked him point blank: "Are you gonna throw a five spot in my basket, because I need to make money for cat food tonight?"
He then morphed, in my mind into a character I encountered a few years ago, who went by the name of Hector.
Hector was a bum who preferred to try to dress up to the degree that the free clothing closet at the mission would allow, but who, underneath it all was just a skeezer.
Hector had done the same thing as this guy, which was to assure me not to worry and to promise me that he was going to throw money in my basket, and to reach out his hand for the guitar.
"I thought you were going to throw me a tip," I said, making it clear that I was waiting for him to do so, before handing him the guitar.
He then made some kind of lame gesture towards his pocket, but never showed any money.
As it became apparent that he and the raggedy skeezer on the other side of me were hanging out together, I changed my tack. I began to play and "Hector" began to sing out of tune, until I stopped and asked: "Can I get back to work now?" adding that I worked alone and basically just trying to get both of them to leave.
He promised to stop singing but still wanted to sit there
Then Hector started to harp on "You don't like me, that's why you won't let me play your guitar" and the skeezer by my backpack said "If someone asks to play your guitar, you should let them.."
Rather than try to argue, I think I said something like: "It's like when you're a kid and you let someone ride your bike; and you get it back and notice that one of the pedals seems slightly crooked or there is a little wobble in one of the wheels."
I said that as I was packing up, having decided to give them the satisfaction of thinking that they had ruined my night and that their plan for the evening of "Let's find a street musician and mess with him; you try to get his guitar and then start banging on it and singing way out of tune, and I'll croak out of tune, too and we'll see how long we can go before he realizes that we don't have a dime" was a huge success and they could feel proud of themselves.

The guy's resemblance to Hector and the other skeezer's to the guy that Hector used to hang out and skeeze with was pretty uncanny. I wondered if it was the same gene pool.

I'll have to figure out how to proceed in the future, should they come along. But, they are out there -guy's who get enjoyment out of ruining someone else's night.

I only made a dollar while they were there, and this from a well dressed black man, who seemed hesitant about putting the bill in the basket, almost as if he thought that all three of us might be together, and reconsidering, based upon their vibe.

So, I packed up and went back to the Quartermaster, where an inspection of my backpack revealed that one of my hats had indeed been stolen from where it had been sitting behind it.