Back When I Was 21...

Post From September 24th, Or So (has been sitting on my hard drive for over a week)

Right (or above, depending upon how it renders): Scenes from the great flood of August 31st...

I am listening to Edgard Varese and the sound of the typewriter effect that I use when I type stuff, which has been less frequently, lately.
My blogging presence has fallen way off.
This is mostly because I have larger ambitions about what it could be.

I think I would ultimately prefer to do a "vlog" (for video blog) -with stuff like me walking around and recording snippets of a dozen street performers and then splicing them together into a video and setting them against different beats and with additional lyrics and vocals added.

That is just one example of things that I know that I could do, but am still just outside the realm of.

Or maybe making a collage of passed out on the sidewalk people. Or walking around interviewing people in some capacity...

Instead of talking about this trip to Massachusetts every year, I should actually make the trip, but also make a documentary.
Maybe include clips of me busking in different cities along the way; maybe doing each consecutive verse of a certain song; to tie it all together. Yeah, I have aspirations. But, meanwhile...

"Life is what happens while you are making other plans"  -John Lennon

I have several long stories that I am not sure where to begin.


I have been working hard on music in my studio, lately, just not polishing anything up enough to want to post here.


Jacob showed up a few days ago, toting a Casio “WK-200” digital keyboard.
It is a make and model that he once owned one of, but lent to a girl he knew, who had it stolen out of her car.

It is basically the 2012 version of the joke of a Casio (that sounded like "a cheap Casio") that I once had in the 1980's.
That one had presets that were labelled with instrument names.
I would press one and play a few notes and be hard pressed to hear the "saxophone" or especially the "guitar" promised by the button.
The "drums" were especially cheezy coming through the 3 inch speaker.

Well, all that has changed.

Just as my laptop running Audacity allows me the capacity to achieve better sound quality than The Beatles or Elvis ever had, this keyboard can be programmed to sound just as good as any Madonna album that came out in the 1980's.

And any deficiency in the modern sense would be just a consideration of it not having the absolute, very latest gizmo. But those would be B.S. things like voice auto correct, and other things less pertinent to musicianship and designed more for a lazy generation that doesn't have the attention span or the drive to learn how to read music, or to sing or play an instrument.

It is actually a high resolution digital recording of a real instrument that sounds when you press a key. And the keys are touch sensitive and able to reproduce the sound of, say, a softly played trumpet, complete with "breathy-ness" when lightly tapped, or the more brash sound of a loudly played one, when pounded upon.  

So, why am I not cranking out "Abbey Roads" or "Like A Virgin"s? Give me another year or so...


There are something like 580 different sounds, to include all kinds of drums.
When set up to be a drum kit, just about all 88 keys have some kind of drum or cymbal or percussion instrument assigned to them.

These can be played in real time (it’s amazing how Jacob, who is a piano player, can play the drums on the thing as if the drum beat is just another melody) or the thing can play its own beats in more than a hundred styles.



The danger is in the fact that, it can be overwhelming.

If it takes me 36 hours to record a decent song using 2 guitars, bass and drums, then what will happen when I start fiddling around with 32 piece orchestral stuff?

The music is piling up on me.


Some day soon, I am going to take a bunch of poetry that I have scrawled out into notepads and random sheets of paper and try to set them to some of the music that is accumulating.

Livepatch

I can remember when I drove a car, an old used car, I wished that there was a slot in the side of the vehicle, into which I could slide money, with the result being that the condition of my car would improve, to the tune of whatever amount I inserted.

And it would be a global improvement, just as if the car would get un-driven whatever distance and the wear reversed.
If I regularly slid a certain amount into the slot each week, I could keep the car brand spanking new with zero on the odometer each Monday morning...type of thing.

But, alas, I couldn’t do this.

I would pay 90 bucks to replace the radiator in my car, which would do nothing to help the warped crank shaft pulley that was about to wear out.

But, here it is, 25 years later and my Linux computer is doing just that. With each update, programs that I haven't used in a while because they crashed all the time are being patched and improved.

I think it is about time to fire the Openshot video editor again to see what improvements have been made in the last year or so. If it doesn't crash any more, I might start making videos again.

Goodluck

I went to the Goodwill Store hoping they would have a manual on Photoshop in their book rack, and walked almost in a beeline to one which was there. It was practically the first book I saw. That was the fastest that I have ever been in and out of that place.


I can get just as much out of it, using the GIMP editor that I do, as a Photoshop user would, as long as I am astute enough to figure out such things as that the “color picker” in the GIMP (symbolized by an eyedropper) is the same thing as the “eye dropper” in Photoshop.

August 30th, Monday
It is Monday.

Jacob and I went out and busked last night in the French Quarter.

Arriving, by bikes, at the Lilly Pad, we encountered loud music coming from a speaker across the street diagonally from us, it having been set up by a group of thug-like individuals who have apparently rented the condo where Barnaby used to live.

Barnaby preceded Lilly and, back in 2012, was the first resident of the block to befriend me and encourage me to become the resident busker of the block, since I played a lot of Grateful Dead type music, which he liked.

Times have changed. Barnaby has moved and now this group of young wannabe thugs apparently are renting the place and trying to attract the opposite sex by flaunting the fact that they have an address on Bourbon Street. They are taking the approach of hanging out in front of the place with the front door wide open to reveal the chandelier in the anteroom.

And by cranking hip hop music.

Jacob initially felt that he could somehow outgun them using the melodica

that he just purchased for around 80 bucks.

His intention was to just play very loudly and perhaps in that way ruin their listening experience, in the hopes that they would then shut their system off and just listen to us, rather than to two different sources at once.

It is loud enough to theoretically serve that purpose, as it seems to be a bit louder than a harmonica, even though it is purportedly just a big harmonica with 32 notes that are activated by the pressing of piano-like keys, which allow the air being blown through a plastic tube to pass over them.
To me, this takes away the ability to use the lips and mouth, with its different embrouchures (sp?) as with a regular harmonica to give the static notes the thing produces more expression. But the pressure of the air you blow into the thing can be varied to give a bit of vibrato.

First of all, I had to consider Lilly.

I have been on the block for about 7 years, the last 4 of which having been made possible through her intervention, with the police and with rival buskers.

When she lobbied the neighbors on my behalf, she assured them that I would be playing at a reasonably low volume level. It was in fact my harmonica which became the only sticking point with one person (Barnaby, as a matter of fact) who said something to the effect that my harmonica notes wended their way, regardless of other sounds which may have actually been louder, all the way to the back bedroom where he slept, and into his ears, disturbing him. He said he didn’t know what it was about the thing.

It was probably that I kind of sucked at playing it when I first started out. It took me a while to figure out that you can vary the pitch of the note played by increasing or decreasing air pressure.
I was tuning the guitar to softly played notes and then wailing upon louder ones, once I got into the middle of a song.

So, I decided that it would be better not to try to get the group to turn down their music (so they could listen to us instead?) with a flourish of cacophonous, high volume melodica notes, when we could remove ourselves to the spot across from the Quartermaster, where it would be quiet enough so that we could try to sound good instead.

We could have gone over to them and asked them how long they planned upon cranking their music. Maybe Jacob would have been the man for that job.
Myself, I was having memories of the last time I tried that, when a guy had a dune buggy parked by the bar with his music cranked.
He looked at me like I was a bum and seemed to be trying to impress upon me that fact that he would play his music for however long he liked, and that somehow it was connected to his socio-economic status as a dune buggy owner.
I know that that was another time and place and that it had nothing to do with the present moment, but another thing was the type of music they were listening to.
How do ask people if they would please turn down their “Boom-boom-nigga-nigga-boom-boom” type music? Especially when you are trying to conceal a low opinion of them and approach them respectfully.
I already had garnered that they were peacocking, like the guy who sets a big bottle of Hennessey brandy on the top of his car so that every materialistic female that walks by can appreciate the fact that he had, if nothing else in life, been able to procure a 58 dollar bottle of booze, and that that must be the way he has it in life; just look at how worn the paint is in that spot on the roof of his car...
Their music, I imagine, along with giving them immense entertainment and enlightenment, is intended to advertise their affiliation with the hip hop culture and signal that they are amenable to participate in the commission of a variety of sins, all glorified through the lyrics...
But, without going deeper into my personal bias against anyone over the age of 15 who subsists on hip hop, especially the variety that has a phrase like “She got a big ol’ butt” on repeat for the entire 8 minutes or whatever of the song.

(If I were in a band like that, I would feel like a crack dealer selling the music; happy to have made money off whomever downloaded it on Spotify, but shaking my head and feeling sorry for them), I wasn’t in the mood to go across the street even to ask them how long they planned upon cranking their music.

I didn’t want to text Lilly, either.

We moved down to across from the Quartermaster.

Remembering a lady who had opened the door of the house directly across from where I play there, once, who had said: “It’s twelve-thirty, come on!” I cautioned Jacob against playing the melodica too loudly.

This brought protests from him, who felt that, if the music called for it, he should be able to play as loudly as possible.

I had to give him a quick summary of the French Quarter busking experience as I had known it the past ten years.

I told him about how, for at least two years, I had set up here and there and played, hoping to make as much money as possible before any number of things occurred, not limited to a brass band of young black thugs setting up and beginning to play, making you wonder if they had planned upon doing so before seeing a white guy trying to busk, a street light inexplicably going out, leaving you in too much darkness to expect to make anything, it starting to rain, a parade materializing from around the corner then stopping right in front of you, where some lengthy part of the ceremony is enacted, having a car park right by you with its stereo cranked while its occupants wait a whole hour (jeez, they’re slow) for someone to emerge from a house, a skeezer show up and decide that he or she is going to hang around and bug you until you give them one of the dollars that they see in your hat to go away, or a lady who opens her front door and say’s: “It’s twelve-thirty, come on!”

I told him about how I had started out playing on Decatur Street for an average of 7 bucks an hour before discovering the 900 block of Bourbon Street.
And how tourists who are interested in visiting the oldest bar in America seem to be a subset that are better educated, more cosmopolitan, more civilized and (most likely, as a result) more wealthy, than Joe Tourist six blocks up the street, on his third Hand Grenade and yelling “Show me your tits!” at a lamp post.

And about how the block is also a conduit for those seeking an alternative to hanging around Joe, and having been informed that they can reach Frenchmen Street, with it’s more artsy and folksy feel, by just following Bourbon Street until it runs across it. “Another seven blocks, but that last three blocks are small ones,” is what I tell those of them who seek directions.

My music is somehow a pretty good fit for the likes of those who want to sit in a candle lit replica of a late 18th Century Tavern, and for those who have fled the neon in search of a more artsy atmosphere.
The fact that I focus on what I’m playing and make no overt overtures towards the tourists money also seems to work in my favor.
So, the upshot was that, in a place fraught with peril to the busker, I had found an oasis, where it was a considerable privilege to play, and it had been like finding (stumbling upon?) a needle in a haystack and that, only after having eventually run into the residents near the Quartermaster in my travels, from being there so long, and been friendly towards them, was the privilege extended to that block, and so that was why he should try not to play the melodica at full volume, and that I would make sure to not play any music that called for it.


So, once across from the Quartermaster, we managed to attract a group of tourists who listened enthusiastically and tipped, until a skeezer decided, as one of them often inexplicably does, that since the people stopped to listen to us play, they would be a captive audience for his skeezing.

He was soon in their faces, begging right over the music, as they often do.

There was a guy with them, who had long gray hair in a pony tail, who seemed affable and had a ready smile.

After he had asked: “Was that one of your songs?” after we played “Hubert’s Trip,” then said he liked it, another guy in the group asked us if we recognized the guy.

He looked like a typical hippy, with his long gray hair in a pony tail.

He assumed a humble disposition and was in the middle of saying: “Oh, they probably wouldn't...” when the first guy added: “Allman Brothers?” and then named a couple other musicians, perhaps Derek Trucks.

the GIMP chapter 4: brushes

The subject got changed and we never did pursue the exact identity of the guy, but I guess I could Google the Allman Brothers and see if I can spot the guy in a photo; maybe as one of their roadies, or something.

But whichever famous musician he is, he liked “Hubert’s Trip,” which was cool.

This was in spite of the skeezer ruining it by acting up as the best part of the song was coming up. He raised his begging volume, maybe because they were ignoring him and listening to us instead, and that was was enough to make the group decide to continue on, in the direction of Frenchmen Street, where music more like “Hubert’s Trip,” and less like the “Hello, Dolly”s of Bourbon Street, are played.


My collaboration with Jacob is bearing fruit, but not according to any blueprint that I might have envisioned.

One of the good things to come out of us jamming at my apartment is that I feel that the nearby residents are becoming acclimated to the sounds and perhaps learning to block them out and I have less of a sense of being under a microscope when I practice stuff that isn’t meant for human consumption.

Some of Jacob’s callousness in that regard is rubbing off. Now, if I play one scale repetitively for 20 minutes I’m not bracing myself for someone to bang on my door and yell: “Is that all you know how to play?!?” or whatever.

That still might happen, but I now care much less about it.


I worry about Jacob.

He has a job, which entails sitting in a car that has a magnetic Terminix “security” sign affixed to it, and basically being present to make sure nobody enters a house which has been draped in a gigantic orange tent, bearing all kinds of signs on it warning of “deadly poison.”
Maybe he is there to keep gas mask wearing burglars from entering a place where they can be pretty sure nobody is home.
But, last week, he was on a site and stubbed his toe on something while trying to retrieve an extension cord to plug in his laptop and fan and he called his boss, who wound up driving over there to relieve him of his duty. So he could go home and nurse the toe, I guess.

He said that the cut was about a half inch long and was bleeding.

Then, recently, he turned down another 120 dollar paycheck because the site was in the business district wherein there may have been large numbers of people walking around, who might see him sitting there in front of the house covered in a huge orange tent and make him feel self conscious.

I was shaking my head. It was almost comical. Like, if you were writing a movie script and you had one of the characters in it have to call something off because he stubbed his toe; you would almost want to change it to something like at least a bee sting, or accidentally spraying mosquito repellent in his eyes. The stubbed toe has become cliche...

But, all I can do is shake my head and think; maybe it’s reasonable, for this millennial generation to feel entitled to a life without any hardship, at all.

I can remember thinking as a kid that, by the time I grew up there would be robots doing all of the work and we would all be free to fly around in our cars, with computers making all the decisions.

But that is a job that Jacob got through fellow “church people.”
So and so, met so and so through bible study and it came to be known that Jacob needed a job where he wouldn’t have to work, and lo and behold, the Lord provided.

When I was in my twenties, I started singing in a choir in a Baptist church, where it turned out that millionaires worshiped and, lo and behold, I too, wound up living in a mansion with the whole third floor mine, to include my own bathroom.

I had to answer a breakfast bell at 7 AM sharp every morning, no matter how hung over I was or how little sleep I was on, and then was usually asked by my 72 year old host, Richard, to read a passage from the bible before we dug into the eggs and bacon, and after we had held hands in prayer and then silently meditated upon whatever...

But, hell, I think if one of Jacob's generation was tired or hung over they would just moan out that, they can't make it to breakfast, just can't do it; too tired...

How times have changed.


I guess I eventually left there, in pursuit of God...not to be facetious.
I would give my spot under the wharf the nod over the mansion, because it was totally mine, no strings attached..

But, what was this post about anyways...Oh, yeah...

The Flood

Last night, my neighbor, Wayne started frantically knocking on my door. He asked me if my place was flooding like his was.

It was, but not as bad.

Someone on the third floor had stopped up his toilet, and like the mentally ill recipient of assistive living for the elderly that he apparently is, began to flush the thing over and over in an attempt to make it go down.

I had thought it curious that Harold was sitting in the middle of the floor in the bedroom, having moved from where he had first laid himself down, on a pile of dirty laundry next to the closet near the bathroom.

Water was dripping down into the closet and coming out of the ceiling light/vent in the bathroom. The same thing in Wayne’s place, but he got the worst of it, due to, I think the tilt of the ventilation shaft.

It’s really a mystery to me how water from a flooded bathroom on the third floor would drip into the apartment below it, but would, for the most part wind up in Wayne’s apartment, on the bottom floor.

I know gravity comes into play.

Wayne and I both have closets near our bathrooms and most of the water came from the door frames that frame those closet doors; the rest, through the ceiling lights in our bathrooms.

It’s odd that, that very morning, as I was sitting in my room in a spot that I had just moved a chair to where I had never sat before, it looked to me like my floor was not exactly level, it seemed to cant towards Wayne’s apartment. That could be an optical illusion caused by the bottom of my bathroom door not having been planed right, I thought.

Now I think that the floor probably tilts ever so slightly towards Wayne’s. He got most of the water.

In the photos shown, Harold wanted to get of of Dodge after it started raining inside, and especially after the sound of nearby Shop Vacs filled the air. I shot a video of him making his escape past the imposing figure of the maintenance guy (his identity protected by a mop handle) and to the outdoors, where it was not raining.