I'm eating. And with abandon.
I have a frozen type pizza in the oven at 4 hundred degrees and it will get such a treatment for about 14 minutes; then; after having dumped a tin of sardines in mustard sauce on the top of the pie about a quarter of the way through its cooking cycle, I will soon be chowing down and washing down with sangria. At least for tonight, this is the greatest country in the world.
With it being very early on a Wednesday morning; and me having slept maybe 5 hours within the past 24.
Last night would have been a good night to go out and busk. I had woken up around 4 p.m. -a full 5 hours before I would have to be ready to go out.
 |
| So far, it's chicken 1; turkey 0 |
The harmonica issue has been on my mind, having had one of my front teeth cracked after biting into a cherry pit (like the dried ones "may contain") so that there is a sharp edge to what is now a David Letterman type gap between my two front teeth (maybe I'll get another pair for Christmas...).
My last time out, I almost bloodied my inner lip from playing draw notes on the thing, which was drawing some of the flesh of my inner lip through the gap, with a force commensurate with the passion with which I was expressing those particular notes. They require "bending," which is achieved through further mouth gymnastics which seemed to put additional friction friction on the sharp part of the tooth. I'm hoping that the tooth will wear smooth, maybe if I start gargling sand...
I'm procrastinating upon having all my remaining teeth pulled, to be replaced by a full set of dentures. I may have to relearn the harmonica after that, but at least I won't be mangling my inner lip on the sharp edge of a broken tooth.
I imagine I will lament the fact that my brand new dentures might look unnaturally white against the backdrop of my otherwise dingy appearance. "There's no way those are his real teeth," people might quip.
But looking half my age, as I might, when following my optimal diet, is already belied by the condition of those teeth. All that fluoridated water over the course of my lifetime, and for what? When I was living in the woods and would tote "spring" water out to my campsite, I would going something like 5 years between toothaches, and even those could be cured through acupressure, deep breathing exercises and eliminating red meat from my diet for a while.
So, last night, as I was still shaking off the cobwebs after waking at around 4 p.m., Jr knocked on my door, offering me a share of a joint and "plenty of alcohol," if I wanted to go to his place to jam. I guess I figured I could do that and still make it out to busk by the usual 9:40 p.m. or so.
But, I wasn't taking into account the insecurity and paranoia that smoking weed can instill in certain people who smoke it, myself included. There have been times when, after getting baked, I would feel like I was in a fuzzy cocoon, as I looked out the window of my apartment into the dark night, which seemed to stretch to infinity, with the Lilly Pad being away in a distant galaxy; with the path to it being fraught with all kinds of hidden dangers and obstacles. And, I would decide to not go off into the Great Unknown of the murder capitol of the nation - just one skinny guy with a guitar, harmonica, and milk crate, against the world.
Many nights there is hardly any traffic on Canal Street, while at the same time, the Lilly Pad is teeming with tourists; so there is often that leap of faith required to ride the 2 miles, hardly passing by a soul, ostensibly to go out and play for "all the people" at my spot. Though, often I round the corner onto Bourbon and remark to myself: "So, here is where all the action is..." when I see 75 people, after such a solitary journey.
Jr. has been getting on my nerves, as I have started to notice a certain narcissism in him, which was further illustrated last night when, about a half pint of vodka into the proceedings, I went to move my guitar and wound up knocking my little Yamaha amp off a little table it had been on. My cord snagged on the neck of the guitar which yanked on the amp, causing it to fall a couple feet and thump the floor.
Jr. had been at his stove, cooking what would later give me an allergic reaction. Upon hearing the thump, he immediately ran over while saying: "I hope that wasn't my s**t that just fell!" in a threatening tone of voice.
Seeing his own guitar still leaning on the couch and his own amp still on another little table, and realizing that it had been my amplifier that fell, he relaxed and said: "OK," shrugging it off and going back to his stove.
Nothing like: "Man, what happened? Is your amp OK? It didn't break, did it?" such as someone with the empathy to intuit that my own little amp might be just as valuable to me as his is to him might say.
I could picture it being his guitar that I (accidentally) knocked over, and the neck breaking on it; and him launching into a tirade, the upshot of which being: "You're gonna pay for my guitar! I don't care if you have to trade all your food stamps next month for cash; or if you have to sell everything you own; you're gonna pay for my guitar!!"
And this from a guy who calls me a half dozen times a night sometimes; on the landline; on my cellphone; and then, this all failing, will come knocking on my door as loudly as if it were the police.
Then it's always the same situation: he is drunk and stoned and wants to play his guitar really loud, which he enjoys more when he has a "rhythm guitarist" to play along with. That's where I come in, stone cold sober and not in the mood for "revelry," most times. He will typically blather out drunkenly: "Come on, let's jam! I'm ready to go!" He's ready to go; I'm not. Which one matters to a narcissist?
So, today I woke up around noon and had to remind myself to take full responsibility for having hung out there and drank and for having accepted, on the way out, a Tupperware full of the beef stew that he had been cooking when my amp fell.
My sleep was broken because of my lower legs itching and hive-like bumps having risen, just below my knees. I had to think for a few seconds on the subject of: "what the hell did I eat?"
And then, I remembered.
Jr. is constantly trying to push food on me; in the traditional way of a lot of Italians whom I have known over the years have done when I've visited them. They have seemed almost insulted by my turning down their food; as if they felt they were offering me their love; and I was turning it down.
They seem to be particularly incredulous about the existence of food allergies, too.
"It's all in my head; all you hives on my legs! And you shins better stop itching, because there's no such thing as food allergies!!"
Not only that, even when I was able to sleep, my mind was full of static and senseless dreams were mingling with the Youtube videos that were auto-playing on the laptop that I fell asleep while watching.
I decided that I'm in a predicament like a traveler who makes a wrong turn. Sometimes the best option is to double back, spending some time just to get back to where you were when you erred.
I would work my way back to health by first doing the Wim Hof deep breathing exercises; then would get on my bike and go get some orange juice, along with some instant coffee and some alkaline water (so I won't have to drink the tap water, which may be even worse for me than Jr's cooking).
The deep breathing exercises already done, and my morning bowel movement providing evidence that my body couldn't rid itself of Jr's stew fast enough, I was able to refocus upon the things I was grateful for and eventually felt my spirits lift. It was in this state that I decided I would spring for another can of food for Harold, who has been stuck eating the dry stuff the past couple days.
Getting to the lobby, on this errand, I ran into a lady who lives in building C and has cats; who immediately asked me if my cat had food. "I'm actually on my way now to get him a can..."
She told me she would give me some food for Harold. "I know, being a magician (sic), you don't make a whole lot of money," she said, as we walked to her apartment, which reeked of cat urine, where there was a stack of about 8 cases of Fancy Feast and Friskies brands of food, leaning against a wall in her kitchen. She told me to grab a couple of them "I just want to make sure you have enough to last the month," she said.
And so, after depositing the 48 cans of food next to Harold's dish, I set out again for The Brown Derby, where I bought a bottle of orange juice, a 2 quart bottle of alkaline water, and a small jar of instant coffee, which was $4.99.
I realized, too late, that I could have skipped the coffee, as I wasn't planning upon drinking any before going to the plasma place, where I would get 80 bucks, before stopping at the Walmart, where I could find a better deal than $4.99 for 3.5 ounces of the precious bean.
But, I should know by now to automatically double the plastic bags that any stores give me to carry my purchases in. I hit a bump in the road soon after leaving The Brown Derby, and the single plastic bag tied to my handlebars couldn't withstand the jolt, and I was soon holding up traffic as I stooped to gather up the water, which had luckily not burst open, and then as much of the instant coffee, which hadn't fared as well as the water, by tilting what was left of the shattered jar, so as to retain as much of what wasn't laying in the road, as possible.
Now I can only drink each cup down to within an inch or so of its bottom, so I don't swallow any slivers of glass. I'm pretty sure glass doesn't float, so the uppermost coffee should be safe. I suppose I would run it through a paper coffee filter, as if it were the ground kind, if I were overly concerned about vomiting up blood; but that's extra work. I should know by now to heed my intuitions; the coffee could have waited. But, as I'm out of kratom right now, I guess I wanted at least some kind of stimulant in the house...
Then, when the 4:10 p.m. street car passed on by, about 10 seconds before I got to the stop, my plans to get the 80 bucks from the plasma place went on down the tracks with it. Better to wait until tomorrow, than to catch the next car and wind up being one traffic jam away from having wasted the bus fare each way, plus an hour and a half of my time. I wouldn't even be able to utilize that time reading "The Human Stain," by Philip Roth, because I would be too distracted watching the clock, with my stomach tied up in knots, sweating over every minute that passed, as the 6 p.m. closing time of the plasma place approached.
I'll miss having kratom for tonight.
Tonight is a chance for redemption when, instead of accusing Jr of being possessed by an evil spirit that is hell-bent upon sabotaging my busking career, I will have a chance to just say no.
Like I could have said last night, to everything, and especially the "beef stew," which I suspect was more like soybean and hydrogenated soy oil stew. At least that's what the flare up of eczema seemed to by trying to say. It figures that Jr would buy the cheapest and least healthy foods possible; the better to save money for the necessities of vodka and weed.
What remains is for me to play a bit of harmonica to see if that broken tooth is still going to be a problem. The other night, it was kind of in the neck brace crooked, and I didn't stop to bend it back into shape, so that may have been the problem, and not so much the sharp edge of the tooth.
I just played along with the classic rock station for a couple minutes, and the lip felt OK, but I was having some trouble bending the very high notes on the 9th and 10th holes. Bending those notes requires something like learning a language comprised of sounds not heard in English. To bend the middle notes downwards, for example, you make kind of a "thchew" sound while blowing into the thing, but when drawing on the highest holes, you have to shape your lips into an unpronounceable syllable, which I found through trial and error. This might be much more difficult when you have a gap between your front teeth...
I was just signed up with something called Ambetter health insurance. From a guy who walked up to me on a corner, and first asked: "Do you have Medicaide?" and then, after I said I did, went on to sell me on whatever this "insurance" is [that promises to send me $100 in cash each month that I don't make a claim, or whatever he was selling...]. I wonder if the dentist that I am "entitled" to see can apply some kind of non toxic substance to fill the gap between the teeth, in lieu of a costly procedure -something like Liquid Wood, for teeth...
But, Is Ambetter A Trap?
The packet that came in the mail from this new insurance company informed me that I still need to take a couple more steps in order to be enrolled -probably so they can legally steal me away from the Medicaid people- but there is also fine print about a "digital ID" that is required as part of the membership.
This is not a road I'm willing to go down since the Big Pharma companies are among those obviously running the world right now, more so than any "governments" are. And they just made a ton of money over the past couple years, which might make them that much more powerful; and any "digital ID" that I'm required to get will potentially reflect the fact that I refused to be treated with a certain product, that I might otherwise have been mandated to submit to, had I not been blessed with not needing to fly anywhere, nor visit any particular bars or restaurants, nor work in any number of industries. Digital ID's could easily morph into tools of authoritarians who might want to put a block on the bank account of someone who doesn't parrot a certain narrative.
Thankfully, I wasn't duped like, say, Alex Carter in California (author of "The Pie's A Lie" blog) who rolled up the sleeve on one arm, while saluting the Pfizer corporate flag with the other, as Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (NPR) played through his ear buds.
This sounds like from around January of 2023, and on one of those magical nights when nobody yelled "Freebird!" during the performance.
It's Tuesday and I am set to go and sell my plasma; first I might call Keshaun, whose number I have been given by Jacob about 5 weeks ago now, it seems..
Keshaun wants to do a video interview of me as a documentary. That is what his major is, as he is a college aged black guy who met Jacob through the First Baptist of Kenner church or some other way...
I had the flu-like thing for about 3 weeks before my lungs cleared back to the point of a moderate smoker's rather than a moderate smoker who can't hold down a puff of tobacco without being racked by a coughing fit...
Also, there were times when I was thinking Keshaun might ask "How about a little later on today we get together," when, at the time, I might have been on 2 hours of sleep over the past day...
They are still working out the bugs in the audio.com feature of the Audacity sound editor. I wasn't able to upload a photo to go along with the above song, although this time I was able to add a "category" and a "description." The bug probably has to do with the app being allowed access to the files on my laptop, or not.
What Daniel's Reading
I'll have to read it again because I kind of skimmed over some earlier sections because I didn't know that later on I would care about the characters being portrayed years before most of the action of the story is set...
I can see why Philip Roth is so highly regarded as a writer, and Jennifer Egan, for that matter.
Proving how hard it is to put drums to a piece of music that was played without having a drummer keeping "time," this version of The Carcass Song is from January 7th, 2023, or about 2 months ago already. Jacob and I maintained a pretty even tempo on this version, and adding digital drums to it after the fact was almost as easy as creating a beat and then letting it repeat by itself. But, by the end of the song we were something like 4 tenths of a second off the tempo. That's pretty steady, but finding the spots where we slowed down a hair and then adjusting the drums accordingly is an art form in and of itself...
But, as one of my goals is to realize constant and never ending improvements, I suppose I'm leaving room for them.
It's Sunday morning at around 7 a.m. The Morning Doves just sang from the Singing Bird Clock.
I got back from busking at around 1 a.m.
I only wound up playing for about and hour and making 16 bucks.
I had arrived in the Quarter with $2.75 on me. This represented the bus fare I would need the next day in order to go to the plasma place and back.
It was a gamble, spending it on a couple shots of brandy, and putting myself in a position where a zero dollar night would really have me up the creek without a paddle; but within ten minutes I had at least enough for the trip out there, and before 20 minutes was up, someone had thrown a 5 dollar bill, so I had bus fare, plus Harold's food money.
This living on the edge is nothing new to me. There have been other nights when I spent Harold's food money, on the speculation that I would make it back.
I always sigh with relief when the first 5 dollar lands in the jar; or the first 5 singles...
After an hour, I took the 16 bucks to the Unique Grocery store, and bought one more shot of brandy, with half a mind to go back and play some more.
Then I thought about having to be up around 12:30 p.m. to make it to the plasma place, and decided to split my time between that and busking. There were still a good amount of tourists traipsing by the Lilly Pad at around midnight, so it was a tough call. Tanya was packing up when I went by her spot around 12:05 a.m. and that was enough to tip the balance in favor of going home. If she didn't think it was busy enough for her to make her $100/hr; then how am I going to make my $18/hr?
She had been streaming her act on Facebook "Live," or whatever it's called; and her stream will show her talking to me for a few minutes at a little after midnight. She had been there since 11 in the morning; and would have just finished playing for 12 hours, so maybe she wasn't knocking off due to her prospects of making more money. Maybe 12 and a half hours is enough. Perhaps she is mellowing out some, now that she is around 40 years old.
Of course I always feel a bit like a slacker when I go past her, in her 9th hour of playing or something; when I haven't even started yet.
I can remember her having a black and blue mark and blisters on the shoulder where she sets her violin during the Mardi gras one year when she was playing from 11 in the morning until around 3 the next morning. Somehow she would go home and get maybe 6 hours of sleep before going right back out.
I find it hard to go right to sleep after getting home from busking.
I think I'll wait until tomorrow to go the the plasma place. Otherwise my days to go there will be Thursday and Sunday, since those are the days I went last week; and you can't have more than 2 donations within any given 7 day period. If I go tomorrow, then I will be on a Monday and Thursday schedule, which is advantageous in a few ways. I won't miss out on a 90 dollar bonus because, for some reason, they aren't giving a bonus for a second donation within the first week of March. So, if I go tomorrow, I'll get the same 40 bucks; and then I can get the 90 dollar bonus when I go on Thursday; this will reset my days so I won't get stuck (excuse the pun) having to go on Sunday, when the place can be packed with other procrastinators who've waited until the last day of the week to get the 90 or 100 dollar bonuses.
I'll have an easier time going to sleep knowing that my alarm isn't set to go off in just a few hours; knowing that can cause insomnia. I get to the point where I might decide to just stay up because getting just 3 hours of sleep can make you feel more tired upon waking up than if you hadn't slept at all -something to do with R.E.M. cycles. If you happen to be in a deep sleep when that alarm goes off after 3 hours, then you will be in a dopey half awake state the whole day...type of thing...
Speaking of Tanya being able to play for 12 hours a day at the age of 40...
I wonder if, at some point, her body will break down in some way; like her getting arthritis in her bowing elbow; or some variant of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Me being 18 years older than her, it might seem like I would wear out before her, but her 15 hour workdays might kind of even out our odds of having some kind of physical breakdown of the body.
Just as I have started to wonder about Tanya, I have just started to have issues with my teeth that might effect my harmonica playing.
Basically, my front teeth are beginning to crack and break; as a prelude to falling out, I suppose.
Right now the damaged teeth have some sharp edges and tonight, when I was playing "draw" notes (where I have to draw air inward) I now have enough of a gap between my two front teeth that a bit of the flesh of my inner cheek gets pulled into the gap. One of the teeth has a sharp edge where it's broken.
After playing a certain amount of notes, that bit of flesh started to become irritated from rubbing against the sharp tooth. If I played long enough the skin might break. Maybe a callous of sorts will form where the tooth rubs. I imagine anyone who is gap-toothed would have the same problem trying to play a harmonica.
What this might mean to my harmonica playing career remains to be seen.
At some point I will probably have all my remaining teeth pulled out so I can wear a "full" set of dentures.
Now that I've decided to blow off the plasma run I guess I'll go and get a 24 ounce beer and maybe make a food run. I'm kind of craving sugar, though, dammit...
Maybe a compromise would be natural peanut butter and coconut milk, stirred together with some honey, or agave nectar, instead of the sucrose.
Perhaps I haven't been holding up my end of the bargain...do you think?
The reason I got this free for life apartment, was because someone argued for me and made the case that this particular homeless street musician was contributing towards the rebirth of the post Katrina hurricane New Orleans. A storm which caused about half the population of the city to leave.
The population went from about a million to about 450 thousand. A lot of them went to Houston, Texas I heard.
And there was a push to attract street musicians who would populate the corners of Royal Street and alternatively Frenchmen Street with the highest caliber of musicians available.
And since I had established myself as an every night type of busker, to be seen somewhere for at least 3 hours any given night; and since I was deemed to be worthy, by the other street musicians, some of which had clout, such as Doreen's Jazz Band, whose horn player once said of me: "Oh, you do have something to say on that thing," after I had chanced upon the guitarist from that outfit who was on Decatur Street playing along with none other than the famous clarinetist whose name I can't even think of now. But that is more an observation of my memory than a critique of the clarinetist as being perhaps not so "great" as I have stated, since I can't even remember his name...
He was the guy I encountered less than 3 weeks upon my arrival, by boxcar, into New Orleans.
I was playing directly across from the entrance to the Hotel Monteleone (sp?) because it met all my requirements as far as acoustics. As I arrived here with a guitar and a harmonica and not much else, I made a rounds of the Quarter and found 2 places in particular which were like huge speaker cabinets; like those stores where you walk down like a tunnel with glass on both sides, behind which might be manikins adorned in the attire products available inside. But the effect upon a musician playing right in front of such a man made cave is to make the guy sound really good, for some reason.
Anyways, there I was in front of this glass tunnel playing across from the swank hotel and up walks the clarinet player, wearing almost a tuxedo type of outfit. He began to argue to me that he was something like a fixture at that spot, and that people who came annually to New Orleans and stayed at the Hotel Monteleone (sp?) as kind of a tradition, were certainly going to want to keep that tradition intact by throwing the clarinet guy, Ricky (I just remembered) a $100 bill. Because, every year you go to New Orleans and there is this amazing clarinet player across the street from the hotel, and you always throw him a $100 bill; that's how good he is. You would never hear such a clarinetist in Cary, North Caroline, type of thing.
And, Ricky had never seen me before, so he knew I was fresh in town, and there was probably a fiber in him telling him not to run off a newly arrived street musician who might contribute to the environment and enhance the experience of tourists; provided that they have something to say on that thing.
So, to make a long story shorter, Ricky actually gave me what turned out to be sound advice in telling me about the places that I would later find out, through trial and erro, were really the best places where I guy who looks homeless could make a decent living playing an acoustic guitar and harmonica.
Despite the great acoustics, an un-amplified guitar is not loud enough.A clarinet, being blasted by Ricky is at a perfect volume to fill the jewelry draped ears of those stepping out of their $279 per night rooms, for a night on the town.
I knew this, but I stood my ground and invoked the unwritten rule of street musicianship, the "I was already here" rule.
Ricky, to his credit, walked of with his clarinet, but probably not far because he knew what I knew; that, as soon as I had made a 5 dollar tip, I was going to go to the second best acoustical spot that I had found in my wanderings. Because I played a few songs, during which I could tell that I wasn't quite connecting with the people standing on the carpeted sidewalk in front of the hotel. And, after I got a 5 dollar bill from someone, I decided to leave in search of greener pastures.
The music Ricky plays, there's a good chance that a person stepping out of the hotel grew up listening to. On a radio.
Because it seems that the people who can afford that hotel are up in age, a bit. Like an average of 72 years. That means that Ricky ripping up a World War II era song there could likely produce a hundred dollar tip any moment.
Even Billy Joel was probably almost 70 years old when he stayed there about 6 years ago now, and famously played the piano in the Carousel Room.
But I had held my ground and I think Ricky kind of respected me for that, or at least thought: This guy's gonna need that kind of backbone to survive here, or maybe: He reminds me of how cocky I was when I first came here.
So, Ricky walked off without showing any anger, knowing that I was going to find out that I should have gone directly to the block he told me about on Decatur, along with his affirmation of "You'll make some money there.." and soon after I left, after playing for about 20 minutes, I wasn't 3 blocks away before I heard Ricky's clarinet jazzing up "If I Only Had A Brain," the song from The Wizard of Oz, and also kind of Ricky's way of telling me, as I walked off, that if I had a brain, I would have not chosen to try to busk across from the hotel if I didn't have an amplifier..
But, don;t take my word for it; this clip shows Ricky playing in 2010, the very year I would have encountered him; and the same season if the attire of the tourists walking by whose reflections off the glass are any indication. And, without this being a performance of "If I Only Had A Brain," this is pretty much what Ricky was wanting me to step out of the way of, so he could put the glass tunnel to better use...
Oh, and other findings on the web revealed that Ricky Paulin (as that was his name) is no longer with us. He died.
3 Years Later
And so, on this particular day, I had crawled out from where I slept, under the wharf where the Steamboat Natchez docks, acquitting my plush 3 inch thick cardboard, and bidding my pet rats adieu, leaving them to be dazzled by the light show displayed all over the surroundings from the morning sun reflecting off the Ol' Man. The way the light shimmered off of water that was either slightly disturbed by its current, or in waves from a ship that just passed; made it dance and flicker wildly, as it threw intricate, ever changing patterns on the wall behind me. But, I couldn't stay there all morning; I had to go into the Quarter with my guitar on my back to try to pay the bills.
After the Natchez departed on its 10 a.m. run, I emerged from under the wharf, making a show of zipping up my fly for anyone who might have seen me, and wondered what I was doing under there. I got to Decatur Street and encountered Paul, the guitarist from Doreen's Jazz Band, who was accompanying Ricky, and his clarinet. Paul is a friend of mine who, after hearing me play, back in 2010, had encouraged me to stay in New Orleans, saying: "I think you should keep doing your Elvis Costello type stuff, and throw in your originals, here and there."
He and Ricky were at one of the corners that Ricky had suggested to me as an alternative to across the street from the Monteleone.
Somewhere in the middle of me conversing with them, I took out my guitar and played a bit. Ricky told Paul that he thought I had improved in the 3 years since he first encountered me across from the hotel (the spot seen in the video above). He asked me how well I did, money-wise. After I gave him an honest account of what I had made the previous night, Paul spoke up and said something to the effect of: A lot of street musicians will tell you they made 40 or 50 bucks when they actually made 21, but I think Daniel does the opposite. I guess I had told them about making 21 bucks the night before.
But, I guess the point of this post and in wrapping it up, is that I feel guilty sometimes when I don't go out and busk; because I wound up getting my apartment in large part, through word of mouth, and with me being put forth as someone who is enhancing the French Quarter experience for tourists. I was asked, at one point, by Dorise Blackmon, who was in the real estate game, when not accompanying Tanya Huang the violinist (at about 50 bucks per hour) if I could consistently come up with 35 bucks a week on what I made busking. She had some dwelling she could rent me at that price. I had to tell her something to the effect of not wanting to have any pressure put on me to make x amount busking. "That's exactly when my luck would run dry and I'd start having 19 dollar nights, and be forced to have to give something up , like alcohol, weed or tobacco..."
But, about 5 years after arriving in the city and having eventually settled into a steady sleeping spot under the dock; and a steady playing spot after having made the acquaintances of a lot of the people who live on Lilly's block. And then after Lilly had visited each one of them to ask them if they would be OK with her petitioning the "Quality of Life" commission, as she mentioned to the police, as she was informing them that the law against buskers playing in residential neighborhoods had been waived in my case, and would they please not harass me; I was given a reason to feel remiss when I don't busk any given night.
Add to that the apartment I live in.
I'll never know whose "good word" was put in what ear to have had the keys handed to me.
Ricky played jazz in Preservation Hall, which is about as high as you can go as a musician here, and if anyone would know which strings to pull to get a musician off the streets, it would have been him.
So, with that I will wrap it up and pack my stuff and go out and play on this Wednesday night, as it is about 10:30 p.m. now.
