I may delete this picture later, but see if you can figure out what just happened. Besides the collision I mean. Hint, it is the fault of the car in front with a fat broad yakking on the cell phone instead of driving right. The lights you see had just turned red and the white van over the hood of the front car had run the yellow light.
An early start, Carlos came to the door at 7:00 AM. He and Wallace went for coffee. Shortly thereafter, Hayley came by, checked out our fridge, and left with her 6 foot 6 ten years younger boyfriend who has no car. They wanted a ride home. No car, huh? And you wonder why people frown on older woman younger man relationships. Still, it must be nice to be so tall women fight over you. Both Wallace and I have been watching for a sofa; that is really the only major article of furniture we lack and I have a fully equipped trailer ready to curbside a good one at a moment’s notice. We want it free. By local standards, this place is now very nice, in some cases well beyond what others are struggling for. But the two of us planned for all this and so we deserve it thanks to nobody but ourselves, and in fact, we are slowly beginning to acquire a slight but steadily increasing degree of luxury that neither of us had before.
It’s little things for now, like never running out of necessities but soon this place will fulfill its promise as a Florida cottage near the sea. As long as Wallace is here, the only thing we need worry about is pet food and too much rain. By 10:00 I am typing to the soothing sound of the neighbor’s A/C, the cat purring, and Carlos snoring in the living room chair.
Count me glad to have the morning off to scan documents as I do keep records of most important things. That includes non-financial data, such as titles of books I’ve read. Filing takes a half-hour a week ( about one day a year, but totally not the same effect) and my records have bailed me out countless times. Things still do get lost, but nothing on the scale of people who have lost probably six months of their lives stomping around. I do note that despite my minimal contact with “government/tax/medical” that my files from those sources have reached to 130+ documents just in the past year, many of them stacks (multi-page documents stored as one record).
EVENING
This being my first Saturday off in months, I had great plans to go out somewhere. Theresa called from Camp Wilmie near noontime to say she’d gone downtown to the Barbary Coast and would have liked some company. Now that she knows the town, I’m promised a grand tour. Who knows, I may just take her up on that some time soon. She did mention regretting not taking the room here, but stick with the plan. Just don’t haul off to Philadelphia for work because it things are really no better there. Or anywhere.
I knuckled down and have learned eleven of the tunes on Eddie’s list. Tomorrow will tell how many of mine he has worked up to speed. (None.) This gives me leverage against certain assumptions that every guitarist I’ve ever met brings to the first practice. Like thinking I am joining their band instead of the other way around. The fact of the matter is that no guitarist will ever be the total star of the show when I am on stage. Get over it.
Later. Carlos had to crash here again on the understanding that is it unless he’s got some cash up front. If you have never been in a musical group before, you’ll find this interesting. Carlos is a rhythm player and it turns out his perspective on lead players jives with my experience. The historical precedent was the 15 years (1965 - 1980), when lead guitarists became almost, but never quite, as famous as the better vocalists. This spawned huge masses of “lead” guitarists with fanciful dreams of doing the same. Instead, they became the worst insufferable gang of wannabes of this era.
Oddly, they created a self-fulfilling prophesy in a destructive sense. Because there are 23 million “lead” guitarists in the USA, there will be some in every audience. They don’t notice the other musicians on stage and spend inordinate amounts of time complementing each other, as with all cultists. They develop the attitude that the rest of the band is there to back them up. They will not knock it off with writing “original” guitar music ad nauseum. But worst, they erroneously consider themselves the masters of all they survey.
The bad image of lead players (in performing bands, not recording studios) all too often spills over to bass players, who are often failed guitarists who switched to bass. Carlos explained that is why in a year, he never came around to hear me play. But he has in the week he’s been here, and says I am one of the best. He knows bands looking for bassists and says he can get me hooked up with one in short order. My only stipulations are a house gig or gigs, and no out of towns for less than $200 my share after expenses.
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