I have to think about what I’m going to say in the interview portions of this movie I’m involved in making, where I will be featured. I found out that it’s about addiction and the role music therapy can play in recovering from that hopeless state of mind, body, and soul. It’s going to mostly examine my experiences and story, which is heavy, man. We already have footage of me talking about writing and picking the songs I’m going to sing, but now I have to delve into the gritty stuff, the events that happened before I was able to write and sing songs.
One idea I had was to showcase a kind of “day in the life” or at least a typical weekday morning from my last summer on the streets, when I was completely consumed by addiction:
I would wake up somewhere, usually in midtown Manhattan, on a pile of cardboard after only getting about 2 hours of sleep. Sleeping on a pile of cardboard on the sidewalk is incredibly uncomfortable. I toss and turn even in an actual bed indoors, so falling asleep probably took just as long as the time I spent actually asleep.
Around 5 a.m., I would make my way to a church in midtown, near Madison Square Garden, where I would join the line with other homeless people in the area for a free breakfast and two cups of coffee. The line was long, and it took about 2 hours to receive a Danish, a peanut butter sandwich, and sometimes a yogurt. I would sit on the sidewalk and fill my belly until around 7:30 a.m.
Afterward, I would take a short walk to the exit of Penn Station, under Madison Square Garden. Usually, I had a black Sharpie marker, so I would grab a decent-sized piece of cardboard from the usual NYC piles of trash and write something like “homeless + hungry, please help” on it. I would also try to find a clean cup to shake, where people could drop spare change. It’s important to avoid having coffee and milk in the bottom of the change cup because it gets nasty.
Knowing it was rush hour, I anticipated a significant volume of commuters coming out of the door across the street from the former infamous Pennsylvania Hotel. Just people commuting from New Jersey and Long Island to their cubicles or wherever they went. Either way, there were plenty of them. With the energy from the two cups of coffee, I could muster the courage to panhandle from these working, functional citizens with their nice clothes and the latest iPhones, featuring AirPods. I won’t get into how it made me feel like a bag of shit begging for money on the street; I’m just presenting the facts of what I did. Perhaps the complete destruction of personal pride will be evident in the film; we’ll have to see. Undoubtedly, it was painful. My entire life was excruciating on every level imaginable. I was nothing but a hollow shell of a human being. It certainly wasn’t the kind of life anyone would desire for themselves.
During those times, I would sing. Specifically, I would sing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” in the bluegrass arrangement I knew from hearing Jerry Garcia perform it on a tape I had from Broadway 1987.
“If you get to heaven before I do, tell all my friends I’ll be there soon.”
I thought this might be an interesting element to discuss in a documentary about music and addiction. I considered singing that line during the interview.
People did a few different things. Some ignored me, while others pretended to pat their pockets so that I knew they had at least tried to help me in my pitiful state, there in the July heat amidst the hustle and bustle. Some people even dropped money in my cup, sometimes even a $20 bill.
By 9 a.m., I would take the $30-$40 I had managed to scare up and head to 36th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue — the open-air drug market and heroin shooting gallery. I would purchase a few bags of heroin and some crack. Then, I would go to the bodega to get a crack stem, a ball of Chore Boy steel wool, and a lighter. I would sit on the sidewalk and smoke crack until it was all gone, and sniff 2–3 bags of heroin. It would keep me okay for a few hours until I had to figure out the next way to escape the harsh reality of living on the streets, which usually involved shoplifting air duster from CVS and huffing it. However, there are several stories about that on this blog.
Do you think this would work in the fim?ev.penk7@gmail.con
Listen, I may not be panhandling on 34th street any more, but honestly I’m thinking about it given my financial insolvency. here’s the good news, I can do it digitally, and you can be that person to help a brother out if you like my blog. hell, maybe i’ll even sing “swing low sweet chariot” : https://ko-fi.com/evr0ck17 . by the way, i should be starting a real job by the end of the week, so you can expect less of me singing for my supper.
