Saturday Night, Sixteen Bucks

World
I haven't been listening to NPR much in the past few days.

Do you know "Tangled Up In Blue?"

Local
I haven't bought a newspaper in a while.
Arts & Leisure

Busking
It was actually in the temperature range that has had me cowering in my apartment on a few occasions of it the past few weeks.

But, I have thankfully emerged from a kind of fog that fell over me with a renewed purpose in reclaiming the Lilly Pad as my playing spot by virtue of being there a certain time, night in and night out, and of putting in x amount of hours, knowing that there is a numbers game involved and that I have to have x amount of tourists walk by me and hear me play in order to tip the balance, excuse the pun, to a fifty-fifty chance of me landing "the twenty dollar tip" from one of them.

I think I did the math on that in a previous post after having examined a lot of data from this blog, and done calculations based upon estimates of how many people walked past me on certain nights, using the web cam on Bourbon Street to actually count bodies over a certain time frame as part of it etc. versus how much I took home that night, and then protracted over a time period of a few years.

I don't go back too far because I have been steadily improving as a musician, with the last leap having been made quite recently. This came about as a result of my finally being able to get past the milliseconds of indecision that might have plagued me in the past when I was seeing more than one melodic possibility with part of my mind wanting to sit down over a cup of coffee one morning and write out a bunch of scales and chord inversions and become more familiar with the territory, and the other part wanting to sound my best at that particular moment driven by inspiration.

So, I can't really compare what I made busking five years ago to what I might make tonight, given the same amount of tourists.

I had calculated that I need to see around 1,040 tourists go past in order to "expect" to see a twenty dollar bill or twenty ones in my basket.

Last night's 16 dollar outing had me probably only seeing 200 tourists go by. It was cold, and so that might be a datum that I need to factor into the equation that boiled down to every tourist I see being worth 25 cents to me, walking George Washingtons, them...

The Empty Basket Syndrome

This statistic is skewed by the fact that I think there are tourists who throw me a twenty after seeing how hard I am playing versus what is already in my basket, maybe seven dollars, and are trying to right me on a night when they don't see many others like themselves in the area and might feel that, if it weren't for them, I might have a miserable night, money-wise.

This would explain the frequency of my having thirty dollar outings that would otherwise have been five dollar ones if not for one twenty dollar and one five dollar tip.

Tanya Huang

Tanya Huang, like a chameleon has enacted an almost complete departure from the "Tanya and Dorise" musical incarnation of the past.

She was wearing a headset microphone and was singing a song in Chinese, I am guessing it was, as I rode past last night on my way out. And she seemed to be chatting up the audience a bit, too.

This made me think about how chatting up the audience is one of my forte's. Chinese music, maybe not so much...

I made it a point to stop and wave to her. She smiled and said "Hello, Daniel" amplified through her headset and reverberating down Royal Street.

I know that, when she is doing something that is way out of her element, maybe someone offered her a fifty dollar tip if she would do some gangsta rap that she just happened to know, maybe from a former roommate or something and because she has a "phonographic" memory and I ride by I am almost embarrassed for her and think that she want's to yell out to me something like: "I've never tried this song before."

But, I wanted to give her a thumbs up over the fact that, despite the nervousness in her voice betraying her discomfort, I respect the fact that she is pushing the outer envelope and expanding herself. It kind of represents to me, her going to "the next level."

I'm going to have to stop and talk to her one of these times when I'm not in a hurry.

Other than that, it is Sunday night and is 44 degrees.

I need to pick up some kitty litter and totally clean up Harold's pit of a litter area. He is totally outside of the box when it comes to his business, has been staying inside more on these cold days, and the dollar store has been out of the dollar bags of it, lately.

I don't think I will go out to play tonight, as the temperature would have me playing sloppily. Although, there would still be people from Canada or Sweden milling about, who would say that, right now it is thirty degrees below zero back home and they can't believe that it is the middle of December and they are walking around with just a jacket, no gloves, no scarf, no parka tightened around their faces; "This is beautiful weather...do you know and Neil Young?" type of thing...

The next day or so promises to be on the chilly side, especially since I am a night time busker and have to look at the "low" of any particular day as far as what I would be dealing with...