It Must Begin With the Busk

Right after waking up...

No Youtube videos with titles like "Food Shortages Are Imminent!" but instead, I will either open the Mel Bay "Building Right Hand Technique" book and get lost in the hypnotic cadence of the metronome; or will go to a special folder that I have set aside for songs that I want to learn. There is a fork in the road, first encountered upon waking; with two entirely different days each way.

Last night I wasn't happy with the strings on the guitar.

Starting 55 Cents In The Hole

Saturday night; I left out of here at about 10:15, after having considered getting an earlier start than usual. 

That thought came at about 7 in the evening. The clock had been running slowly all day, in my perception. It might be that I just woke up earlier than I had thought, but; every time I looked at the clock it was "only" whatever the time was, and earlier than I thought it would be.

But then it was the nit picking details like taking an extra 5 minutes to trim a moustache that hadn't looked ragged until I was on my way out the door, and then looking around for a pick (one was on top of the refrigerator) etc. I need to think like a busker the whole day through and not switch modes so drastically; like pulling the shade down and making the outside world go away; until it's time again to flip the switch back on.

It felt kind of dangerous to be out there; I couldn't help but think about the mounting desperation of people who are being subject to rising prices and emptying shelves. I also thought about the agenda of the global oligarchs who are seeking to make the masses poor in order to bring about their "great reset" and it didn't seem out of the realm of possibility to have a small group of young black kids jump out from behind somewhere and try to beat me and take my guitar, my bike and my phone, plus whatever was in my pockets. Without going into theories about why the masses are becoming more angry in general, suffice it to say that I rode through the Latino neighborhoods on my way to the Lilly Pad. The hard working, family oriented, decent Latino neighborhoods.

I had just a small amount of change on me; 55 cents short of a shot of brandy and was planning upon seeing if the Ethiopian cashier at Unique Grocery would let me get one, to take the edge off (or whatever is the bullshit term alcoholics have invented). 

I was looking on the ground all the way down Canal Street for change. Or for a dollar, or a five, flattened and stuck to the street car tracks, like I have found twice before. I guess when people drop money on windy days and it escapes them; one of the things that will stop it from tumbling further is a wheel from a street car. My theory is that when the car is in motion it creates a low air pressure under the thing which will suck the money under it, and that is how it gets run over and flattened on the track. Unless it is just a mere coincidence that I have found 2 separate 5 dollar bills stuck on different tracks.

I was trying to remain happy and grateful.

After having started to feel the symptoms of some kind of flu on Thursday, which kept me from going to the plasma place, because one degree over 98.6, and they will turn you away, I had woken up Friday morning feeling miserable enough that I went and spent the bus fare to the plasma place on some BC Powder aspirin, and returned home to do several rounds of Wim Hof breathing exercises (it had actually taken a few rounds to make me feel strong enough to ride to the store for the aspirin and back).

I also opened the Covid-19 testing kit that I had thrown on a shelf, in contempt of those same global oligarchs, after it had come in the mail, unbidden, about 6 months prior. The stupidity of the whole situation became apparent when, in the instructions for the thing there was the caveat that, just because the test might indicate negative, this didn't mean that you didn't have the Corona virus. So, a "negative" is meaningless. And, lo and behold, if the test indicates "positive," don't panic; this could be a false alarm. Anything to make a buck for whoever funneled U.S. tax dollars to the company in China that makes those "test" kits.

Mine was "clearly" negative.

But, I felt too sick and stuffed up to go out and play Friday night, and was reminded how important it is to always go out and busk when able to, and the weather permits it, and Bourbon Street isn't empty with all the businesses closed, because of lock downs, designed to drain working class people's bank accounts; put them out of business, and make them dependent upon the government; the "one world" global government, run by the oligarchs who hold their "Davos" meetings, yearly, in Switzerland -the group that has Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and several other presidents of nations in their employ, along, of course with people like Mark Zuckerman, who uses his social networks to manipulate the populations of screen staring zombies, and do things like delivering 80 million votes for a puppet president that the Great Reset-ers wanted installed in the White House.

Figuring out if you've been brain washed is as easy as asking yourself if you hate Donal Trump, I mean really hate him without really knowing or caring why. That "why" would be "everything you hear and see; on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter" you would have to be blind and stupid to not hate Trump, and want to vote for Biden. Just look at everything on your phone!, type of thing.

But this society of screen staring zombies are an imposition upon me, for example as, whoever came up with the brilliant idea to single out the white people for attack by creating a brand new culture of "people of color," that includes everyone in the world, except of course, white people (with the possible exception of Asians) has divided the planet into an "us and them" dynamic where it is now the Caucasians on one side and everybody else on the planet on the other. Are you just a little brown? Well, come join our team; and fight the oppressors!, type of thing...

Mahogany For The Noggin

So, I brought a weapon with me for the first time ever, to go busk. 

This particular one is a carved wooden stick about as thick as the handle of a baseball bat, and made out of mahogany, I believe, or some other wood if there is one that is even heavier and harder than mahogany. It had been a gift to me from David the water jug (and sometimes guitar) player. I saw it as an act of love, for someone who lives on the street to bestow such a thing upon a friend. On occasions when people have done that for me, it always seemed to stem from their thinking that I was a "nice guy," and seeing that as a vulnerability.

I brought the thing home, where I would every once in a while pick it up and think "man, I'd hate to get hit in the head with this thing!" It has a square block at one end and is carved all along it with stuff that looks like the faces of spirits, maybe Inca art, or art from wherever mahogany grows wild.

I could feel the extra weight of the thing in my backpack with every turn of my pedals.

I got to the Unique Store, where the cashier allowed me to owe him 55 cents, and then headed for the Lilly Pad, while gulping down the shot of brandy.

I was trying to avoid the kind of negative thinking that was trying to crop up in my mind; telling me things like: You see how you have to fight the traffic and pedestrians on Royal Street because you had to stop and get some alcohol? If you didn't drink, you could have ridden Toulouse Street and been at the spot already...

And then there were thoughts about my having jinxed myself by taking on the debt of 55 cents. Watch me not even make 55 cents tonight...type of thing.

As I approached the playing spot, I could hear the sound of an out of tune brass band getting louder. 

And, there, in front of the bar about 50 feet from where I play, they were, about 8 or ten of them. I don't know under what purpose they had assembled because they were a very diverse group of black and white and of different ages; they certainly didn't have the uniformity of any professional outfit that might have been hired by a wedding party that might have paused at the bar to get drinks as part of a march through the Quarter, accompanied by their own brass band, type of thing.

A rather large young woman who was holding a trombone looked at me, and the guitar on my back and kind of smiled, as I was riding past, as if thinking that I was coming to join in the dissonance. I decided to just set up my stiff and wait them out for about 15 minutes and then move down to near the Quartermaster store if they were still playing past 11 o' clock.

One of the blessings of being able to play in a residential block is that other musicians who show up, and who are loud, know that they are on borrowed time. There is a guy who occasionally comes along beating on a bass drum and singing "Down in New Orleans" type of stuff; and his goal seems to be to try to wring 5 or 10 bucks out of people before a resident comes out to inform him that they are trying to sleep, or hear their TV, or hear their spouse trying to hold a conversation in their living room. 

One thing about the houses in that block; built in the late 1700's is that sound goes right through their walls. Sitting in the anterior rooms of Lilly's house, for example, you can hear what people walking past on the street are saying. A guy drunkenly banging on a bass drum and singing about being down in old New Orleans, is a short lived phenomenon.

"Man, Don't Be Coming Up On Me Like That!"

There was an old small skinny black man, sitting on Lilly's stoop, ripping the flaps off a cardboard box (and just throwing the fragments on the ground all around him) as I got there.

He became confrontational and started to berate me with: "Man, don't be coming up on me like that!" and said a few more things I couldn't make out. After his box was to his liking, he went over by the brass band, where it became evident that he was planning to circle them, inviting people to throw money in the box. The band stopped playing and walked off down the street just a few minutes after he started doing that. 

Maybe they were just playing for fun; knew that they kind of sucked, and became embarrassed over the guy actually asking for money from people, for what they were hearing. In any case, my odds of making at least 55 cents improved dramatically with their departure.

32 Bucks An Hour

Having only one shot of brandy in me, I was able to concentrate pretty well and, after shaking off same rust on the first song, was able to get 3 bucks thrown in the jar with the second one (my debt paid; and a can of food for Harold) and then, relieved and loosened up, I jammed as hard as I could on one particular Grateful Dead song called "The Music Never Stopped," and was deeply focused upon playing a harmonica solo, while keeping the riff going when I saw a female arm enter the halo of my spotlight and put a 20 dollar bill on top of a few more ones that I hadn't even noticed be put in there.

One of the abilities that I'm glad to be possessed of is being able to say "Thank you; God bless you," in between breaths on the harmonica without interrupting the flow of the music. I just cut one phrase short and then start the next one on the next beat.

But, then it was about midnight; I had 32 dollars; and thought I would go down to get at least one more drink of something alcoholic; and so I packed up my stuff and, as I was getting on my bike, what looked like the perfect group of tourists walked past. 

Of course one of them was singing a song that I know how to play, so if I were still sitting there, and not running to get more drunk, I would have been able to jump right in. And that might have turned into a sing-along and all 8 or 9 of them might have thrown something in my jar. That's how a 32 dollar night turns into a 58 dollar one in one fell swoop. 

Whereas the alternative was for it to turn into 32 bucks minus the 3 bucks I had to spend on a good beer -a 30 dollar swing, just based upon one decision. But, oh well, I was trying not to entertain negative thoughts.

I got to the store, which I think is called Freddie's Corner Store, and locked my cable through the back wheel of the bike. Someone could steal it, but they would have to pick it up and run away with it; and outrun the mahogany stick.

Penis Shaped Pipes And Serious S**t

As I was retrieving the last of the money from the basket, which I had just thrown in the pack (why sit there and take it out and organize it, folding and counting and becoming a skeezer magnet at the playing spot? There'll be time enough for counting, when the dealing's done, Kenny Rogers would say...) I found a little zip lock baggie of what I thought was powdered cocaine. Every once in a while, people will tip me with drugs, most often a bud or joint of weed in the basket, but sometimes coke. That has to do with the elation and gregariousness and desire to spread "the love" in people that have just partaken of some themselves.

One time a couple sat down on the stoop next to me as I played and I could hear snorting sounds coming from them. After I had played "Tears In Heaven," the Eric Clapton tune, the lady put a 100 dollar bill in my basket, as apparently the toots of coke had elevated the level of my playing that much. She wound up putting a couple more 20's in the basket, which made me wonder what kind of couple they were, where the lady had money, and the guy; who looked kind of macho with a thick handlebar moustache and wearing a leather jacket and was doused in cologne; apparently didn't.

That time, I learned a lesson about the transitory nature of a cocaine high when the same guy came back out of the bar that they had both gone into, alone, about a half hour later and started telling me that his "girlfriend" had been feeling really high earlier and had perhaps over-tipped me, in her exuberance, and I believe was on the verge of asking me for some of the 140 bucks back, when the lady emerged and said something to him in a scolding tone, as if wise to his motives; and he heeled like a dog and away they went. If he had indeed been using her for her money, I guess that meant she still had plenty left.

This time, it wasn't coke, but rather crystal meth that was in the little baggie. I found that out by showing it to someone knowledgeable I know, who told me that it was about 20 bucks worth.

Free Meth; Free Lighter; Satan Looking Out For Me

He even told me how it is smoked, by putting it at the bottom of a penis shaped glass pipe, in the head of the thing and then holding a flame on it for a considerable time until thick smoke rises out of the other end, which is open. "Go real easy on it, though, just test it a tiny bit if you've never done it, 'cause it's some serious s**t," he concluded.

That is one drug that I had never tried, mostly because of the cost of it. Johnny B. used to smoke some and then busk from say, 7 pm Friday night until about 4 the next morning. He averaged about $350 doing so, but had to take 65 bucks, I believe he said, out of that, so he could repeat the feat the next night.

But this was free, and, if Johnny B. was doing 3 times as much, money-wise, and it didn't kill him, I figured I would at least try the stuff. 

I didn't want to pay $3.99 for the penis shaped pipe that my friend had shown me in the store, after walking me in there and asking the guy behind the counter if we could look at one, and so I used a wine glass, and followed his instructions. While not finding any money on the ground on my way to the Lilly Pad, I had found a lighter, which turned out to be a new one, that had a nice high flame.

I inhaled enough of the thick white smoke that indeed began to rise like magic at a certain temperature point, to see what it tasted like.

It wasn't mind altering in any way. I didn't feel "high" at all. But, I started doing things and wasn't really feeling sleepy for at least the next 24 hours. I kept going through Sunday and into Monday, getting a lot done, and then slept normally Monday night, waking up this (Tuesday) morning at about 11.

Low Blood Protein?

I'm glad I still had some money left, because I went to the plasma place, since I was over that flu-like thing that wasn't Covid, according to an unreliable test, but I was still deferred because the sample of blood that they send to a lab every 4 months had come back showing that my protein level was slightly under the allowed level of "6." Mine was 5.7.

So, in that case, they offer to take a second blood sample and, I guess, send it to the same lab to see if the first one had been a fluke; or if the protein level has rebounded. If so, I could donate again; but it takes a week for the results to come back. 

Luckily I had money to get Harold some food, then take the bus back home. I'm not entertaining negative thoughts. 

They drew the first sample the day before I started feeling the flu-like thing, so I might have already had that "incubating" in me, and that could have skewed the reading. 

There must be some reason they offer to give you another shot; maybe their tests are as unreliable as the Covid-19 kits, made in China, by some company that probably gives kick-backs to the Bidens.

The irony is that I had been experimenting with Jordan Peterson's "carnivore" diet, and eating nothing but beef and water. Every body is different, perhaps, and maybe mine needs something to go with that, so the protein makes it into my bloodstream; maybe at least some lettuce, for amino acids...