Remnants 2
I woke up this morning in the new apartment, walked through the maze of boxes and the provisional kitchen (made in the main corridor) to get to the toilet and was reminded of spring 1995.
.
New Orleans:
J and I had been living with his adopted father in a large loft type of apartment with a monster balcony lined with floor-to-ceiling french doors on St. Mary Street in the Lower Garden District. We needed our own space and so J spoke with his friend, Neil a queen in his late 30’s who owned a small antique shop that had just transferred to a new location on Magazine Street (from his old place, an old defunct Movie Theatre down the block). He filled the bottom storefront portion with 1940-50’s designer glass, lamps and chairs (most of which I’ve now come to realize were actually quite nice pieces), and the upstairs was being renovated into an apartment. He split the upstairs into two large sections and rented us the back part.
The building was not zoned for living, there was no shower, no kitchen, a simple toilet hidden behind a partition on the ground floor. The stairs were a built ladder that went straight up. Our part of the apartment also had a back exit but no stairs, so if Neil had to lock up the building with the padlock (to which we had no keys for) we would have to jump from the upstairs back exit onto the parking lot behind us. There was only a simple metal cooking plate for a kitchen so we mostly ate sandwiches.
Neil was a rather good looking man but tragically narcissistic in the clinical way. J’s dad worked in mental health and showed me the DSM IV breakdown to which Neil fit well. Every conversation with him no matter what it would be about was somehow brought back to how great or witty or interesting Neil was. He was also a pathological lair, even about small details that made no difference. If you were to meet him, he’d first be very charming, but soon one would find themselves being constantly put down to make him feel better about himself. His shop was badly tended to and he owed everybody money. He would spend any he had on cocaine and ketamine, which was especially ridiculous because he was also a narcoleptic and fell into spontaneous seizures. In order to get the shop running he stole electricity. There was no phone and no hot running water until it was put in along with a plastic shower cabin after a month of living there. He justified his shop by opening it for a couple hours once or twice a week and talked about how he only dealt with private customers who I never saw.
The upstairs part J and I shared was a giant open room that Neil had to walk through from the ladder to get to his place. It was dark and there were big gaping holes in the walls and it was always somehow wet and stale. We slept on a futon and the rest of our things were in boxes with the exception of a big work table that shelved J’s stereo system that perpetually played The Unreleased Hellraiser Themes by Coil.
Neil had a boyfriend, we’ll call him Andy (I forgot his name). He was a young red-haired yat from somewhere outside the city. We all lived in this building together for about a month and a half until one day J and I came home to find his stereo missing. Neil was downstairs freaking out about some missing pieces in his shop. It finally came out that Andy was a crack addict (which explained the strange metallic smell floating through the upstairs) who would occasionally give Neil the smackdown. This time however Neil left and while gone, Andy packed up some of the good things to sell and took off.
We lived there for about two weeks longer before the police came to throw us out. Apparently Neil had not ever paid the rent – surprise! Neil disappeared for some time after that while J and I went on to have other misadventures. I saw him once later having a seizure on the floor at a bar I worked in. After it was over he got up and went to the bathroom for a few minutes, came out and tried to order another drink. The bartender wouldn’t serve him so he got upset and went across the street to another bar.
Just a funny little anecdote to get you through the day.
This evening I began experimenting with layers of stringed instruments and flutes in a small exercise of pairing them together. It began with a series of inverted fifths played in synchronization as quarter notes in the C2 and C4 registers. Each note represented Violin II, Viola I, Viola II, Violin Cello II, and Bass II. I then layered another series for Violin I, Violin Cello I, and Bass I. I choose to not put the Bass octave to Violin Cello but as the dominant of the inverted fifth chord – mainly because it sounded cool. The overall sound came off something like what one would hear from the strings in the opening credits of a Peter Greenaway film.
Last night I went to see 
Today I saw my old apartment for the last time. The guy who took it happened to also be the first person to see it about a month ago. This month is going by so fast that it’s difficult to remember packing and moving.
It took a couple days in between working on other things to get through Chapter 1: General Review of Orchestral Groups in 
Tomorrow I meet with the apartment manager and the guy taking over after me to sign the final things and then on saturday we move my stuff to the new place. Everything is nearly packed and ready to go. I will spend the rest of tomorrow after our meeting finishing up.