It was "getting on towards eleven" when I left Bobby's apartment, after he had given me some of the "berry white" weed that is the latest installment in the series of whackily named wacky weed.
Yes, I knew that the clock was ticking and that I should immediately head out, but I paused for a cup of coffee at my place when I was packing up my stuff.
Having determined that it wasn't a good idea to smoke any bud until I was at the Lilly Pad, I didn't. It was the part of my mind that seems to always be looking for excuses to not go out and do my duty that was making it seem like I wanted to smoke a bowl before leaving.
But that part of my mind actually wanted me to smoke bud and then become lost in a daydream or to start some project like throwing the Snowball microphone up to capture a catchy lyric or chord change that may have come to me. Then, there would come that pivotal point in time when I have to decide if it is worth going out, given that the night is "almost over."
This is when I might have decided that, even though it was a Friday night, a night that I had religiously played on for years, it was a 53 degrees and there was a possibility of rain in the forecast.
But, I had fifty cents in my back pocket, and maybe a few other pennies scattered throughout the apartment.
Harold had nothing but a dried out piece of salmon in his plate. It was time to shoulder my responsibility, if for no other reason than the cat, I thought.
And that was it. I said "I'm doing this for you, Harold," before I shut the door behind me.
The ride into the Quarter was not uncomfortable, as I had put on almost a dozen shirts, sweaters, pull-overs, sweatshirts and jackets.
Omens
There had been signs in the universe that it might be a fortuitous night.
It was Friday.
On the way to the Uxi Duxi, where Jacob was going to buy me a half shot of kratom, since I only had fifty cents, I found an almost whole roll of toilet paper laying on the ground by where Jackie, my neighbor from two doors down "flies" her sign -sometimes upside down but still airbourne.
This is catty corner to the bar where I had found an almost full American Spirit cigarette on the sidewalk, as if the bartender had stepped out and lit it and taken one drag, and then the phone had rung inside or something.
The toilet paper, I envisioned having been thrown out of a car at Jackie by a prankster. She is the lady who knocked on my door after she had just moved in, and was holding her stomach, due to extreme hunger pains ostensibly, and wanted to "borrow" a pan so she could cook her "patetti." I could picture someone doing a drive-by TP job on her.
When I got to the Uxi Duxi, I noticed that Chris's tip jar was pretty loaded with bills, with at least one Abe Lincoln staring at me from behind the glass.
I was still full of dread about the coming night, though.
I felt a vague foreboding, despite all the signs portending a profitable night.
But, riding down Royal Street, I saw no less than 3 abandoned milk crates at different spots.
Grabbing the third of these allowed me to turn 2 streets sooner than I usually do, allowing me to arrive probably 4 minutes sooner than I would otherwise, which is good when it is already almost midnight and I am not at the Lilly Pad yet.
I set up and started to play, and was able to attract a couple, who listened to "The Carcass Song" and then sang along with "I Feel Fine," by The Beatles, and "Like A Rolling Stone," by Bob Dylan, knowing the words to both songs.
They left a twenty dollar bill, as did another older well dressed gentleman who had stopped and done kind of a double take when I was playing the riff to "A Dream" by Debarge (my latest musical discovery and infatuation).
It might have been surreal to hear that coming from someone who looked more like a source for Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
It very well could be that the guy, who might have been my age, had had an experience similar to mine when, back in the nineties, I would flip right past all the "hip hop and R&B" stations, pausing only long enough to ascertain that it was indeed "that crap"before hitting the "seek" button.
But "A Dream" by Debarge was one thing that got put in the mix that I actually liked a lot, but not enough to have stopped to ask anyone "Who is this?" and probably thought that the infectious melody had been lifted, sampled, stolen whatever from some classical composition.
But, I had gotten curios about Debarge because the sports station I listen to plays about 3 seconds of "And I Like It," by them when going to commercial breaks, and I had been working on a drawing once, and had linked the face I was drawing, to that little snippet of the song.
It was while downloading that when I decided to grab some other Debarge music, even though I didn't recognize any of the titles.
When "A Dream" came out of my speakers, I instantly recognized it as that one hip hop song from the nineties that I did like, and was transported back in time so strongly that it was as if I was breathing the same air from Jacksonville, Florida in 1996. It was the strongest feeling of nostalgia that I have had in a long time. There was a sadness and a sense of loss of a time that will never be again. But it was also a realization that maybe the time is not lost but has only been disguised at the present...
It was easy to imagine that one of the people I knew back then was thinking about me that very moment; wondering what ever became of me...
If it is true that you don't know what you've got until it's gone, then maybe that age is, at last, gone, at least for me.
I realized that that was probably the best time of my whole life, while understanding too that we sometimes only remember the joy and "forget" the pain.
I felt like if I closed my eyes I might open them again to see that I was still there and it was still 1996 and I had just drifted off to sleep and had dreamed the past 20 years.
The sensation of walking around the trailer park where I lived at 1 AM, through air that was warm and humid but had cooled considerably from it daytime temperature, with my pet king snake around my neck, became palpable.
That song could serve as the soundtrack for a time in my life when I wouldn't realize just how happy I was for another twenty years.
That would occur upon hearing "A Dream" by Debarge.
And about the older gentleman who stopped and looked almost surprised to hear me playing that song it seemed very likely that it brought him back in time also. Maybe it was played somewhere like at a bar he owns or he was somehow exposed to it in a way where he wouldn't know who the band was, and likely that he hadn't heard it since 1996.
He threw me the second twenty dollar bill of what would amount to a 58 dollar night on about 2 hours of actual playing. The work in the studio has helped out the busking. Somehow running through a song five times trying meticulously to play it right is good practice.
Having determined that it wasn't a good idea to smoke any bud until I was at the Lilly Pad, I didn't. It was the part of my mind that seems to always be looking for excuses to not go out and do my duty that was making it seem like I wanted to smoke a bowl before leaving.
But that part of my mind actually wanted me to smoke bud and then become lost in a daydream or to start some project like throwing the Snowball microphone up to capture a catchy lyric or chord change that may have come to me. Then, there would come that pivotal point in time when I have to decide if it is worth going out, given that the night is "almost over."
This is when I might have decided that, even though it was a Friday night, a night that I had religiously played on for years, it was a 53 degrees and there was a possibility of rain in the forecast.
But, I had fifty cents in my back pocket, and maybe a few other pennies scattered throughout the apartment.
Harold had nothing but a dried out piece of salmon in his plate. It was time to shoulder my responsibility, if for no other reason than the cat, I thought.
And that was it. I said "I'm doing this for you, Harold," before I shut the door behind me.
The ride into the Quarter was not uncomfortable, as I had put on almost a dozen shirts, sweaters, pull-overs, sweatshirts and jackets.
Omens
There had been signs in the universe that it might be a fortuitous night.
It was Friday.
On the way to the Uxi Duxi, where Jacob was going to buy me a half shot of kratom, since I only had fifty cents, I found an almost whole roll of toilet paper laying on the ground by where Jackie, my neighbor from two doors down "flies" her sign -sometimes upside down but still airbourne.
This is catty corner to the bar where I had found an almost full American Spirit cigarette on the sidewalk, as if the bartender had stepped out and lit it and taken one drag, and then the phone had rung inside or something.
The toilet paper, I envisioned having been thrown out of a car at Jackie by a prankster. She is the lady who knocked on my door after she had just moved in, and was holding her stomach, due to extreme hunger pains ostensibly, and wanted to "borrow" a pan so she could cook her "patetti." I could picture someone doing a drive-by TP job on her.
When I got to the Uxi Duxi, I noticed that Chris's tip jar was pretty loaded with bills, with at least one Abe Lincoln staring at me from behind the glass.
I was still full of dread about the coming night, though.
I felt a vague foreboding, despite all the signs portending a profitable night.
But, riding down Royal Street, I saw no less than 3 abandoned milk crates at different spots.
Grabbing the third of these allowed me to turn 2 streets sooner than I usually do, allowing me to arrive probably 4 minutes sooner than I would otherwise, which is good when it is already almost midnight and I am not at the Lilly Pad yet.
I set up and started to play, and was able to attract a couple, who listened to "The Carcass Song" and then sang along with "I Feel Fine," by The Beatles, and "Like A Rolling Stone," by Bob Dylan, knowing the words to both songs.
They left a twenty dollar bill, as did another older well dressed gentleman who had stopped and done kind of a double take when I was playing the riff to "A Dream" by Debarge (my latest musical discovery and infatuation).
It might have been surreal to hear that coming from someone who looked more like a source for Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
It very well could be that the guy, who might have been my age, had had an experience similar to mine when, back in the nineties, I would flip right past all the "hip hop and R&B" stations, pausing only long enough to ascertain that it was indeed "that crap"before hitting the "seek" button.
But "A Dream" by Debarge was one thing that got put in the mix that I actually liked a lot, but not enough to have stopped to ask anyone "Who is this?" and probably thought that the infectious melody had been lifted, sampled, stolen whatever from some classical composition.
But, I had gotten curios about Debarge because the sports station I listen to plays about 3 seconds of "And I Like It," by them when going to commercial breaks, and I had been working on a drawing once, and had linked the face I was drawing, to that little snippet of the song.
 |
| The "And I Like It" drawing |
It was while downloading that when I decided to grab some other Debarge music, even though I didn't recognize any of the titles.
When "A Dream" came out of my speakers, I instantly recognized it as that one hip hop song from the nineties that I did like, and was transported back in time so strongly that it was as if I was breathing the same air from Jacksonville, Florida in 1996. It was the strongest feeling of nostalgia that I have had in a long time. There was a sadness and a sense of loss of a time that will never be again. But it was also a realization that maybe the time is not lost but has only been disguised at the present...
It was easy to imagine that one of the people I knew back then was thinking about me that very moment; wondering what ever became of me...
If it is true that you don't know what you've got until it's gone, then maybe that age is, at last, gone, at least for me.
I realized that that was probably the best time of my whole life, while understanding too that we sometimes only remember the joy and "forget" the pain.
I felt like if I closed my eyes I might open them again to see that I was still there and it was still 1996 and I had just drifted off to sleep and had dreamed the past 20 years.
The sensation of walking around the trailer park where I lived at 1 AM, through air that was warm and humid but had cooled considerably from it daytime temperature, with my pet king snake around my neck, became palpable.
That song could serve as the soundtrack for a time in my life when I wouldn't realize just how happy I was for another twenty years.
That would occur upon hearing "A Dream" by Debarge.
And about the older gentleman who stopped and looked almost surprised to hear me playing that song it seemed very likely that it brought him back in time also. Maybe it was played somewhere like at a bar he owns or he was somehow exposed to it in a way where he wouldn't know who the band was, and likely that he hadn't heard it since 1996.
He threw me the second twenty dollar bill of what would amount to a 58 dollar night on about 2 hours of actual playing. The work in the studio has helped out the busking. Somehow running through a song five times trying meticulously to play it right is good practice.
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