Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
Independence 1 Independence 2 Independence 3 Independence 4
My art didn't grow in the first month or so. I spent that time in every public space I could find, playing my guitar and singing songs that I knew people would recognize and want to sing along to. I made enough money doing this to eat, but I would never be able to pay rent without a real venue. So I did my best to get noticed, did my best to not develop a smell in the heat and humidity, which was not an easy task. It is hard to believe how easy it is to find a girl when you've got a guitar, I was seventeen and I would sit in Tompkins square park and they would just flock to me. I was in the city a week and I found one that wanted to get together regularly, I worked hard to put together enough money to meet her in the cafes she preferred, and I didn't tell her I had nowhere to stay for the first month, so that when she finally got it out of me it would look like I was proud. Even after she made her offer to let me move in with her I put it off for a week. Eventually I took a job as a waiter because I had to contribute something to make her believe I was serious. My earnings would never even have paid the rent for the place, but I didn't have to ask her for money, and I had a warm place for the winter, once it was too cold to play in the street I holed up in the apartment as best I could and dedicated myself to writing music.
It did not go anywhere. She loved everything I wrote, but I could barely stand it myself. It was never real, never true, never saying anything that I cared about. I played at a few open mike nights and some people liked what I played, but no one who could help me. The second summer I was in New York I was playing three or four times a week, Cafes and the rare bar, but my music was not improving. People were telling me that I was getting better, but that was just polish, I needed something more substantive. Eventually I put together enough original material to play a full set, and with a little financial help from her, I played a real show, in a little venue, and got no notice. I made just enough off the door to cover my expenses, but no one wrote about me, and no one was knocking on my door to get me to play in their clubs.
The one definite successful mark of my music was the stream of females it sent past me. Women that will like a guy they see playing a guitar in the park will instantly love the same guy playing in a shitty little bar with a tiny little audience, as long as he plays the part right. I was very accomplished at playing the tortured and under-appreciated artist whose genius could only be moments away from discovery. Eventually things wore thin with the first girl, mostly I think I wore thin. I was not living up to the implied promise of me, and it was impossible for me to mask this failure with her, because I was as disappointed in myself as she was. So just about the time I knew the first was starting to think about asking me to leave, I was cementing my position with a second. I left before I was asked to go, and tried to maintain as cordial a relation with her as possible, mostly because I knew a day might come when I had nowhere else to go, and she might let me stay with her again, for a day or two at least.
The second didn't last as long as the first, and by early spring I was seeking my next haven, but by the time I moved from her to the third I had been accepted enough in a few little circles to quit my job waiting tables. I still couldn't pay rent on my own, but I could feed myself without assistance, or working. This made me an easier sell for the third, and by the fourth I was able to contribute a little towards the rent, which I only did when I felt things a little rocky between us. There was no sense in giving up money when it didn't really improve my position to do so. Particularly when she didn't really know that I had it at all. After the fourth there was a fifth and then a sixth, I was slowly able to count on a little more money from my playing, and even though I was only playing original pieces by this point I was not proud of my work, and I had not even began looking for a way to record. I would not record something that I did not see greatness in.
I was 23 on my sixth summer in New York, I had been seeing Lucy for almost a year, the first four months of which I was still living with the sixth. Although I was beginning to believe that my only real talent lie in convincing women to love me, if only for awhile, I was beginning to become afraid. I would never be able to live in the style to which I had become accustomed on the money I was making playing music. Maybe I could stay in New York if I moved out to Brooklyn, but even then my socializing would take a huge hit, and that was a large part of how I maintained the following I had. I was still young, but I was now older than the college girls who had for years been my most reliable source of housing. I find that a girl with daddy renting her an apartment will be much more willing to share her space for nothing than one who pays her own way. Moreover, as these girls aged they cared less about image, and more about stability, they were learning that a musician who hasn't made anything of himself in six years is unlikely to do so in the near future. So Lucy was not number seven, she was Lucy, and while old habits insisted that I look at the new girls who might happen into my shows I did not follow any leads.