I need to get more serious about preparing

 I took some things apart today and did some looking around for one of the things first, and then tried to end the listing and of course Ebay won't let me end the listing so I added another digit to the price - if they won't pay $125 for the thing they sure won't pay $1125. The thing's sat around for years anyway and now it's parts. 

Ebay actually sent an error message saying I'm either a bot or using some kind of automated software. Me, on an old computer originally made for Windows XP and on a connection barely faster than dial-up. 

Shit like this is why I need to get a lot more serious about getting back into the busking game. Buskers are nearly extinct now, but that seems to actually work in favor of those very, very few who are the last of a vanishing species. 

In fact yesterday I was hanging out with Tom and mentioned all the regular buskers who used to be around downtown, plus an equal or greater number of passers-through. All gone now. Other characters are gone now too, like the old guy who typically had a dog and a cat, and sat, panhandling, a few doors down from Original Joe's. The last time I saw him, some official thug or "guard" or "protector of the peace and quiet of the bourgeoisie" had him standing up on the sidewalk near his blankets etc., and was talking to him. I didn't hear what was being said, but it's the first time I saw the guy standing and also the last time I saw him, ever. 

And the petition guy, annoying as he was, is gone now too. "Maybe they died," was the theory supposed by Tom and that could be the case, with covid one of the leading causes of death in the US now and likely to stay that way. 

Rabbit Trumpet Guy had at least said something about taking his van "up north" where I guess he had family or had grown up or something. So it was not surprising when he disappeared. But many others have disappeared, all around the same time. 

So it is becoming even more so, that kids are growing up never seeing an actual, live, musician. I can expect to continue to be a big hit with the kids. 

I've given up on YouTube and while videos on PBS.org are about as slow, there's not the full-lock-up thing that happens midway through, the sound's less fucked up, and with Ken Burns stuff it's less messed up that it's really not "video" at an average frame rate of 1-2 frames per second. There's a new Ken Burns series on the US's reaction to the Holocaust that's really good, and I've been able to watch the first episode and half of the second so far. 

I watched while doing octave exercises which continue to be really tricky for me. I'm not sure I should be doing to many of them. I think I'm tightening up somehow.

I need to get more serious about preparing, for if (when) things go sideways. Something happens to Ken or the internet crashes and never comes back up or some damn thing. 

Or, everything will go to plan and now I need to be able to play well enough to make survival money back home; well enough for people to be interested in me and give me a chance. 

Music is about the only thing I *can* do back home. People who are white or at least white-appearing are un-hireable for most jobs, certainly the more desirable ones but back home, even working at McDonald's is considered a "good" job, too good for anyone of lower caste to obtain. In Waikiki, non-whites can sell products, even draw caricatures, without being thrown in jail - a white-appearing person can't do this. Even being a "statue" or having some parrots for people to take pictures with will have you becoming intimately familiar with the accommodations at the city jail. But music, that last resort of the lowest caste, black in New Orleans and white in Hawaii, is sort of untouchable. 

Maybe this is because, like New Orleans, Hawaii owes so much of its economy to music. Music has powered the tourism business since the 1920s when it started. And other than its many US military bases, tourism is about all Hawaii does any more. If it weren't for Elvis singing "Blue Hawaii", the state would probably have 1/10th the population it does now.