I listed 10 things yesterday and photo'd another 10 to list tonight. I'm trying to come up with a schedule that works, and it's seeming like having the things photo'd before going to bed, in that time from midnight to whenever I go to bed and during which I feel more like "puttering" and actually resent having to meet a schedule, works. Then I can actually list the things I've photo'd much earlier in the evening when I'm more energetic.
I practiced some last night too. Lots of long tones. With wind instrument especially, it seems a lot of it is using muscles you don't even know you have, and never actually get conscious control of. I could make a really nice long tone, then repeated tones would get shorter and if I rested for a minute or two, a nice long one again. Interesting.
I got up in time to pack 9 things and took them to the post office and FedEx, collected some grey oyster mushrooms and broccoli florets out back of H Mart, and got back here with the usual collecting, here and there, of packing stuff.
The guys next door had left a lot of junk out there like a big, and a huge, big screen TV, lumber, and some sort of cleaning machine that costs about 14 grand new. When I got back I got the nippers and screwdrivers out and got the circuit boards and some parts with switches and stuff on 'em I can take off, put those in a box here and settled down for a snack.
I'd also taken photos of the stuff to list for free on Craig's List.
While having my snack, a guy came up with a pickup truck and laid waste to the junk. He hammered and pried and so on, and left just the lumber and a few bits of one of the TVs. But I got the circuit boards.
I also tried something I was curious about, which is ice water with a bit of red wine vinegar in it. Supposedly the Romans would drink water with vinegar in it and it gets plenty hot in Rome while you're building the Appian Way or something. I finally got around to trying it and it's really good. I'd tried it with apple cider vinegar and that's OK, but with red wine vinegar it's got a really nice flavor. Take that, expensive little lime juice thingies and stuff I refuse to buy like Mio.
But hey, whence busking? I think because I heard the name Conyers on the radio, some politician's name, I thought of Reginald Conyers, the classically trained trumpet player who busked all over the place including San Francisco and frankly, seemed to have the world on a string.
It took some digging but I found something about him from June of this year:
"Reginald Conyers boils water at an encampment in Oakland. Conyers, originally from Washington, D.C., is a former traveling musician who plays the classical trumpet." - Photo and caption credit to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.
There are literally no other buskers to write about in this area as they are all gone. But this guy was a real standout, playing excellent classical music and I was told a while back about a guy I'm pretty sure was him, being able to play in any style on request and being very good in all styles.
Most of the information about him is about a decade old, but my understanding was he was making really good money, like almost minimum wage which is huge money in my world. In most people's worlds around here, frankly. Sure there are big houses and "luxury" condos around here but what's not mentioned is there are about 12 people living in each one. But I digress.
I thought, via an article about him, that as a fallback he had family in DC or Chicago, a place he could always go if push came to shove. Maybe a camp in Oakland is still safer and more pleasant than Chicago or wherever it was. Maybe his safe haven was taken by a rapacious banker (a redundancy there).
Maybe he still gets out and plays, and one hopes because he's a true musician not just someone making noise as a way of begging. But this is where the buskers have gone. They've died or they're in the camps, and there are no replacements.
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