If You Cancel God, You Have To Cancel The Devil To Maintain Balance

 

I feel sick to my stomach when I see this shot of Bourbon Street at 2 in the morning.

I am in no shape to busk right now. Maybe just because I believe that.

It's just that it takes so little to mess me up.

I'm not like the crackheads that live here, who are like the rats of the famous experiment once conducted.

In that experiment, lab technicians attached intravenous needle to the rats and then set up an environment where, every time the rats poked a certain button with their nose, a certain dose of cocaine would be injected into them.

To make a long story short, all the rats died of overdoses, with their bodies, which hadn't had any food for days (though it was available, but they were more interested in the button) laying next to the button, where they twitched, as they tried to hit the button repeatedly, because the doses were providing diminishing returns, so to speak.

I don't know if I hold myself to a higher standard than the other residents here, but I feel I am messing up by going to the store for a bottle of tequila, perhaps, and then, getting drunk enough to buy, maybe just a little hit of that poison, which is enough to really make me feel like crap, after I come down, and I think about what I hadn't accomplished that night.

Second Day Sober

It is Monday the day after the 4th of July. I didn't go to see the fireworks, I didn't busk at the Lilly Pad, but I also didn't drink, nor eat too much crappy food, having limited myself to 2 packs of chocolate chip cookies out of the machine up front.

I have been practicing out of the "Charlie Byrd's Melodic Method For Guitar" book which is one of the 11 books that I wound up getting for free, as e-bay refunded the 31 dollars to me that I had paid, after the books hadn't arrived after 3 weeks. Then, on the 4th week, after they arrived unexpectedly (by then) and after I sent ebay an email informing them that I had gotten the books and that I wanted the seller to get paid, they went ahead and paid the guy off, so I kept the books and he got paid and ebay picked up the tab.

This goes along with the trend that started back in 2008, when I started busking and started to receive "blessings" left and right while engaged in that endeavor.

Right away, back then, I remember going into a Subway with the newly acquired Yamaha acoustic guitar slung over my shoulder and a backpack on my back.

"Oh, you play music?" asked the thin young black girl behind the counter.

I told her that I did, and that I was a street musician, and talked a little bit about that.

When my sub was ready and I started to reach for money, she had told me something like "No, you're good," and added that she wanted to support musicians or something.

And the trend continued. It seemed like the cards were stacked in my favor throughout those years of being a busker.

And so, through the agency of the slow postal service, the 11 books, which are virtually all I will ever need in the way of guitar instruction books (how could the Chet Atkin's guitar method book only be a stepping stone to any more important lesson book? type of thing) arrived in a very neat package, with the extra touch of "handle with care" having been scrawled in magic marker, and ebay wound up doing the Subway girl thing of "No, you're good," and me getting them for free.

I might be believing in something magical through thinking this way, but, If I were to try to negate any possible "blessing" that the occurrence might represent, then I would have to go on the other side of the equation and remove any references to "curses" that the concurrent trend of doing things like sitting down on my bike seat, right as a thunderbolt flashes above the church at one end of the parking lot, and hearing the thunderous sound right as my butt touches the seat, when I am on my way to get a bottle of wine and then swing by Bobby's to get some weed.

If You Cancel God, You Have To Cancel The Devil To Maintain Balance

I'm at the end of a second day without drinking.

There is the exception of one 355 millimeter can of a tequila based wine cooler type thing that I drank last evening, but I think I've decided to only call a drink that leads to one's falling off the deep end "drinking." 

Because the problem is technically not drinking per se, but drinking too much. And that I often feel pretty confident in my mind that I would feel a little better after "slugging one down" but then after that first one, I begin to change my mind and might have a thought such as "Yeah, I feel a little better...five times as much better would be pretty awesome!" and that it would lead to too much drinking.

I know the 2nd night is usually rough, and that the 3rd is probably the worst.

I think that is because by the 3rd night, you feel completely recovered from the months of drinking every night. You have gotten 3 nights rest, although the first one might have been affected by insomnia, the explanation for which might be that, for months, your sleep period always began at the point when alcohol had made you feel very very drowsy, as the proverbial hypnotist might state it. So, you would plop yourself down somewhere, often without even moving books and cellphones and pens out of the way, and there you would fall into slumber, probably with all the lights in the house on.

But, one less than perfect night's sleep notwithstanding, I can recall thinking that I had "gotten it all out of my system," type of thing, by the 3rd night, and so that can cause me to let my guard down.

The overlying thing is that I am going to at least have to do the "Dr. Christopher's 3 Day Fast And Cleanse And Mucous Free Diet" thing, if not a lengthier fast, until such a time when I can sit peacefully, having forgotten whatever might have been bothering me; and not wanting to bother to try to remember what it was; what was making me punch my pillow, perhaps...and that will be that.

I will be perfectly clear and sober in that moment, and I would have to make a conscious effort to go back on one of my addictions, and this would have to be triggered by some thought that I would also have to had consciously dug up, conjured maybe. And so that will have to be the way it will be.

Then, what kind of music would a busker who is not a slave to caffeine, sugar, nicotine, kratom, pot, alcohol, or other drug play?

Since none of the triggering thoughts would have arisen in his mind to trigger the substance use, those thoughts wouldn't be available to express in lyrics.

This is the ironic "fear of sobriety" that I have experienced. Composing songs about what is not bothering me can be a scary proposition. I might be just fear of success in a related form.

I have made some headway in hooking the microphone up to the portable amp; I might have to get a nine volt battery powered pre amp.