My favoritest thing, my superhero power if ever I had one, is moving people.
Y'know...stirrin their hearts an stuff.
Gettin em to feel things.
Anything.
Putting raw nerves on the table, of whatever emotion, through a thousand means (wordsoundbeat), and watching people react like they thought they wouldn't, watching people startled by their emotional involvement, watching people get swept away by a heart-tide they never saw comin when they stopped for that last mirror-check on the way out the door...it's the most magical thing I've experienced. And it is absolutely magical, absolutely every time.
I Want To Do That With Radio.
I can do it on stage, spitting or singing.
I can do it with written words.
I want to do it with commonplace objects, with sounds we've come to take for granted.
I wanna make people laugh at stuff they've never thought funny,
cry over what they've previously refused to consider,
get angry at what they formerly ignored,
get smitten like kittens when they thought their hearts were long long dead.
Sounds a little lofty, but, in my experience elsewhere, it's really attainable and really powerful.
I don't wanna bludgeon anybody about the head and shoulders to make them feel,
I just wanna lay it on the table
Just
So.
Wanna find the perfect speed where going fast looks like standing still.
Wanna slip people popping inside those pregnant moments of time where everything is mad chaos and perfect meditation,
is alarmingly full and sweetsoftly clarified.
Like butter.
Showing posts with label Music.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music.. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Baby, Stir That Pot!
Streetcar back to the Quarter from City Park, and I get off a stop too soon,
lured by big brass sounds.
I've been vibrating, craning my ears, for the last two blocks the music's been in earshot.
At Bourbon and Canal, a gathering crowd, and the To Be Continued Brass Band (a sousaphone, 3 trombones, 3 trumpets, 1 tenor sax, two bass toms, and a not-quite-ukelele-small acoustic guitar) makin noise, y'all.
Fuckin noise!
And there are young white girls just outta their day jobs dancin in the street with old black men,
gettin down to the pavement,
leanin in and back and shakin what they got.
I keep waitin for her top and bottom halves to come apart;
didn't think bodies were meant to jive just like that.
Suddenly occurs to me this is what the (puritan-derived) churchies get so upset about.
Like maybe they see this dancin, hear this music, and think,
(1)god didn't mean no body to move like that; it's gotta be the devvil, and
(2)(maybe way back in the backa they heads) if that's what livin really is, if that thing, that alien and unknown and (un)holy, is what god did intend, then i.
then i....
Yeah.
Then you been missin out
and fuckin up
and makin a joke and a travesty outta everything you've been given.
Ain't that a damned shame.
Right behind that sad and tiny epiphany,
I realized that that's what it is with this city,
this place,
this magicallyrealcenter that doesn't have any business existing in stodgy, uptight ol'Merica:
'Merica, specially places like New York and D.C. and other financial/political powercenters, don't seem to ever have much to say about the South that isn't pompous, patronizing:
South is racist
(like the this entire country ain't,
to the grey grey bones),
it's backward,
it's inept,
it's still hanging on solely because their northern brothers stepped in an "saved" em (again again again).
...just like we're all "savin" Iraq.
And then they come down here themselves,
these hegemonic holier-than-thous,
and they see New Orleans.
They see...New Orleans!
Merica's Bottom, baby, and all the Juicy that that implies.
Even if these monocled and moneyed don't make it outside the French Quarter,
they see that this city's a mixup,
that it's an anomaly,
that it's everything everybody ever said the South could not be.
This city that embodies what the powerful been fightin to destroy since the country's inception:
folks workin together across all kinds of manufactured barriers.
This city that just keeps coming back grinnin, sayin,
"That all you got?"
Don't that piss off power like nothin else?
Seriously.
Beat down the disadvantaged and watch em get up again.
Leave em for dead and find em later knockin on the kitchen door,
grinnin,
"That all you got?"
Comin down here and hearin this music?
This joy?
This pain and willful
prosperity in terms much more powerful than money
could ever hope to be?
Like the amber cockroaches that patrol its streets,
this city is undeniable.
It keeps on and keeps on and keeps on keepin on.
New Orleans is everything Pops embodied,
everything he preached,
every grin and growl and grimace and grandiose.
New Orleans' been beat down a thousand times in ways most people can't dream,
and still it's gettin up off the mat,
still ain't layin still.
still grinnin out one side of its head askin,
"That all you got?"
The big guys in D.C. started a false war on terrorism for what happened to a single city block in New York.
Wouldn't it be cool if they started a war on poverty and willfully ignorant, inarguably faulty engineering for what happened to the entire fucking Gulf Coast?
To an entire region of the U.S.,
as opposed to one little block of egregious financial hubris?
Wouldn't that be just?
Or at least pseudofair?
Much as this city's denizens wish the rest of the country would care for em,
would take care of New Orleans the way they did New York,
would see this place as the Heart o'Merica it surely is,
they're not layin down,
not givin up.
They know what they got.
They know what's worth carin for.
What's worth fightin and cryin and lovin for.
New Orleans is evolving, always.
Always reinventin itself along its own peculiar lines.
It is a mystery.
An anomaly.
You still breathin?
Your house and all evidence of your past is gone,
Got dead bodies in your dreams, in what usedt'be your yard, but
you still breathin?
Well, then.
Well well.
.....
New Orleans ain't typical 'Merica, y'all.
New Orleans embodies this country's very sweetest dreams of itself.
New Orleans is better than the rest of the country put together.
Period.
And maybe that's why New Orleans gets shit on and left behind so often:
they remind the rest of us how much we're not livin.
...And lord we are the jealous kind, even if,
especially if
it's our own damned fault.
New Orleans reminds us how, if we'd push aside the thin, weakass broth,
that farce of consumerism marketed as the 'Merican dream,
and get ourselves to the kitchen, where the action is,
we surely could help ourselves to the fine rich thick gumbo that the 'Merican dream maybe started out as.
Hell, New Orleans may well be the only place where the 'Merican dream still lives big and mighty,
always changing,
renewing,
recrudescing.
New Orleans, in all its metaphorical forms, still stirs the soup,
shakin its booty to the music in the kitchen.
lured by big brass sounds.
I've been vibrating, craning my ears, for the last two blocks the music's been in earshot.
At Bourbon and Canal, a gathering crowd, and the To Be Continued Brass Band (a sousaphone, 3 trombones, 3 trumpets, 1 tenor sax, two bass toms, and a not-quite-ukelele-small acoustic guitar) makin noise, y'all.
Fuckin noise!
And there are young white girls just outta their day jobs dancin in the street with old black men,
gettin down to the pavement,
leanin in and back and shakin what they got.
I keep waitin for her top and bottom halves to come apart;
didn't think bodies were meant to jive just like that.
Suddenly occurs to me this is what the (puritan-derived) churchies get so upset about.
Like maybe they see this dancin, hear this music, and think,
(1)god didn't mean no body to move like that; it's gotta be the devvil, and
(2)(maybe way back in the backa they heads) if that's what livin really is, if that thing, that alien and unknown and (un)holy, is what god did intend, then i.
then i....
Yeah.
Then you been missin out
and fuckin up
and makin a joke and a travesty outta everything you've been given.
Ain't that a damned shame.
Right behind that sad and tiny epiphany,
I realized that that's what it is with this city,
this place,
this magicallyrealcenter that doesn't have any business existing in stodgy, uptight ol'Merica:
'Merica, specially places like New York and D.C. and other financial/political powercenters, don't seem to ever have much to say about the South that isn't pompous, patronizing:
South is racist
(like the this entire country ain't,
to the grey grey bones),
it's backward,
it's inept,
it's still hanging on solely because their northern brothers stepped in an "saved" em (again again again).
...just like we're all "savin" Iraq.
And then they come down here themselves,
these hegemonic holier-than-thous,
and they see New Orleans.
They see...New Orleans!
Merica's Bottom, baby, and all the Juicy that that implies.
Even if these monocled and moneyed don't make it outside the French Quarter,
they see that this city's a mixup,
that it's an anomaly,
that it's everything everybody ever said the South could not be.
This city that embodies what the powerful been fightin to destroy since the country's inception:
folks workin together across all kinds of manufactured barriers.
This city that just keeps coming back grinnin, sayin,
"That all you got?"
Don't that piss off power like nothin else?
Seriously.
Beat down the disadvantaged and watch em get up again.
Leave em for dead and find em later knockin on the kitchen door,
grinnin,
"That all you got?"
Comin down here and hearin this music?
This joy?
This pain and willful
prosperity in terms much more powerful than money
could ever hope to be?
Like the amber cockroaches that patrol its streets,
this city is undeniable.
It keeps on and keeps on and keeps on keepin on.
New Orleans is everything Pops embodied,
everything he preached,
every grin and growl and grimace and grandiose.
New Orleans' been beat down a thousand times in ways most people can't dream,
and still it's gettin up off the mat,
still ain't layin still.
still grinnin out one side of its head askin,
"That all you got?"
The big guys in D.C. started a false war on terrorism for what happened to a single city block in New York.
Wouldn't it be cool if they started a war on poverty and willfully ignorant, inarguably faulty engineering for what happened to the entire fucking Gulf Coast?
To an entire region of the U.S.,
as opposed to one little block of egregious financial hubris?
Wouldn't that be just?
Or at least pseudofair?
Much as this city's denizens wish the rest of the country would care for em,
would take care of New Orleans the way they did New York,
would see this place as the Heart o'Merica it surely is,
they're not layin down,
not givin up.
They know what they got.
They know what's worth carin for.
What's worth fightin and cryin and lovin for.
New Orleans is evolving, always.
Always reinventin itself along its own peculiar lines.
It is a mystery.
An anomaly.
You still breathin?
Your house and all evidence of your past is gone,
Got dead bodies in your dreams, in what usedt'be your yard, but
you still breathin?
Well, then.
Well well.
.....
New Orleans ain't typical 'Merica, y'all.
New Orleans embodies this country's very sweetest dreams of itself.
New Orleans is better than the rest of the country put together.
Period.
And maybe that's why New Orleans gets shit on and left behind so often:
they remind the rest of us how much we're not livin.
...And lord we are the jealous kind, even if,
especially if
it's our own damned fault.
New Orleans reminds us how, if we'd push aside the thin, weakass broth,
that farce of consumerism marketed as the 'Merican dream,
and get ourselves to the kitchen, where the action is,
we surely could help ourselves to the fine rich thick gumbo that the 'Merican dream maybe started out as.
Hell, New Orleans may well be the only place where the 'Merican dream still lives big and mighty,
always changing,
renewing,
recrudescing.
New Orleans, in all its metaphorical forms, still stirs the soup,
shakin its booty to the music in the kitchen.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
payback.
I've been reading up on the Jazz Foundation & their pro bono emergency medical services for musicians, about their provision of elder care in exchange for old jazz artists mentoring young musicians. My heart swells with joy:
finally, FINALLY it looks like people are trying to care for each other, starting to show how much they value what's really important (music+love+food+life).
As I'm reading up on the JF's myriad beautiful services, I'm listening to WWOZ's live broadcast from Satchmo Summerfest, right down the street, and somebody up & starts in with "When It's Sleepytime Down South,"
& my chest is tight
& my limbs go soft
& I cannot believe how much LOVE there is
outside my body,
within my ribs, and I am so grateful.
So goddamned grateful.
This music SAVED me.
Kept razors from my wrists & pills from my mouth & now...
O christ, really? Finally?
Do I get to start repaying this debt?
Do I finally get to really say THANK YOU in some sorta way that's really, truly meaningful?
Do I finally get to love the people who so loved me, whether or not they were aware?
Bless Bless Bless this city.
Bless these musicians.
Bless the Love that makes this & all things possible.
Lo, I am grateful & overwhelmed.
finally, FINALLY it looks like people are trying to care for each other, starting to show how much they value what's really important (music+love+food+life).
As I'm reading up on the JF's myriad beautiful services, I'm listening to WWOZ's live broadcast from Satchmo Summerfest, right down the street, and somebody up & starts in with "When It's Sleepytime Down South,"
& my chest is tight
& my limbs go soft
& I cannot believe how much LOVE there is
outside my body,
within my ribs, and I am so grateful.
So goddamned grateful.
This music SAVED me.
Kept razors from my wrists & pills from my mouth & now...
O christ, really? Finally?
Do I get to start repaying this debt?
Do I finally get to really say THANK YOU in some sorta way that's really, truly meaningful?
Do I finally get to love the people who so loved me, whether or not they were aware?
Bless Bless Bless this city.
Bless these musicians.
Bless the Love that makes this & all things possible.
Lo, I am grateful & overwhelmed.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
First Second Line
Seen a lotta Death in the last few years.
Lotta Death.
And suddenly,
I find myself in a town that understands how that is.
Got invited, a couple weeks ago, to participate in the second line of a jazz funeral for someone I'd never met. I was concerned about participating in what was such a personal event without prior knowledge of the deceased. Didn't want to intrude where the heart is so tender.
I'd been told, within my first night or two in New Orleans, that one of the bartenders at Harry's Corner was sick, hospitalized shortly before I moved to town. Three weeks later, one of the other bartenders, with that dazed look I now recognize a mile off, told me,
"Well, you heard about Freak, that he's been in the hospital."
"Yeah, of course! How's he doin?"
"He's dead."
"Oh jeezus.
"...Oh, jeezus, darlin, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, y'know...
"I'm just tired of this shit.
"After Katrina, with all the death there, afterwards seemed like people just kept dyin. Had a friend...y'know, we couldn't get the things we needed, things were still so fucked up with the city. Had a friend who had a seizure one night. Had a seizure and died cause the ambulance couldn't get there for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes and she was dead. Of a seizure.
(and in a small, tired voice:)
"...I'm just sicka people dyin...
(*...sigh...*)
"So, look, we're gonna try and get together a second line for him this Sunday.
"Y'all should really come.
"Come down for it. Really."
Now, I'd bowed out of a lotta goings-on since I'd been in town; just didn't feel like bein in-the-swing-a-things social. But, I wasn't about to miss this. Not when the grieving, red-eyed and exhausted, had personally asked me to attend. Not when an hour of my time, an hour's worth of participation might provide a little comfort, put a tiny bit of fill in the gaping hole of Loss. I know how much those little things mean, even if you can't always remember 'em later.
Sunday, I dressed up purty, grabbed a parasol to combat the sun, and a nearly transparent hanky belonging to my dead father-in-law. Wasn't quite sure what to do with the hanky, but Otter told me, "You'll want it." Went down to the bar where people were gathering, where the Treme Brass Band was warming up, where heavy hearts and love were beginning to swell. I felt an emotional break coming soon; the air was thick with its impending eruption. One of the other bartenders from Harry's, squinty unaccustomed to the midday sun, spied me and came over to hug me. I was still a little unsure. My own experiences with Death in the Public Eye had not exactly been pleasant.
"Are you sure it's okay if I'm here? I mean, I never even met the guy."
"No, no, sweetheart, it's good you're here. You'll see.
"...You got an extra parasol upstairs?"
The band started playing on Chartres and Dumaine, right in front of the bar, and began to walk slowly down the street. The dirges with which they began, though written slow and heavy, did not weigh on us as much as elegies are wont to do. Notes deep slow sad respectful mournful, but somehow not feelin sorry for themselves. From the first bass drum shuffles, the first sousa-brass-bottom, it was obvious that this crowd understood to the bone how intractably Life goes on, with or withoutcha.
I stayed back as far as I could, bringing up the end of the line, mostly outta respect for the grieving, partly cause I wanted to see and hear as much as possible. The procession wound through the Vieux Carre, motorcycle cops on either end, and made its way slowly to the home of the deceased. People held hankies in the air, half-steppin to the beat. Soft. Comforting each other. When we reached the front door of the house, Freak's sweetheart took his ashes inside for a last tour, and then brought them back out. The crowd stilled while the bandleader, the diminutive bass drum player, began to sing in a faded, beautiful tenor,
"Just
a closer
wawk with theee..."
Some heads bowed. Most looked up and around, as if greeting the new ghost while bidding his body farewell. As the sweet threnody came to and end, the briefest of silences hung over around among us. Brief and pregnant. Like the pause at a rollercoaster's apex.
And when we began again to move?
Oh, that's when it became...
That's when I began to understand how Death lives in New Orleans: differently from any other place in this country, fer damn sure. The bass drum kicked up the tempo. The Sousaphone, improbably, became light on its feet, bouncing fat notes to the heavens and, progressively, every booty within ear shot right along with it. People clappin on those downbeats. Wavin hankies and twirlin parasols. Sweet dancin the second line, twirlin little circles, laughin mouths open to the sky.
As we wound through the tight neighborhood streets, we stopped at every bar the late lamented had worked in his many years here in the Quarter. At every bar, we stopped and payed respects. Former coworkers stepped out onto balconies and banquettes, grieving and glad they had had a chance to spend some of this man's life with him. One of the tavern owners brought out glasses of cold beer for the band and mourners, and lord was it welcome in that heat! We headed down Decatur for a few blocks; tourists staring, locals waving and grinning and dancing on the sidewalks as we passed. They knew we carried the dead, and so they danced. And danced!
On the sidewalk, I see a group of kids, aged maybe 10 to 15, hands full of shiny music, watching us and talking rapidly amongst themselves. They quickly come to a concensus and run, horns and drums in hand, to the front of the line, exchange a couple words with the bandleader, and then join the musicians, playing bright and joyful and fulla love. A block down, from the opposite side of the street, yet another band of kids joins the procession. The music has tripled, quadrupled in volume, and people are really startin to get involved.
Wellwishers and friends drift in and out of the cortege to hug each other and swap favorite stories about this beloved human. There is laughter everywhere. Two lovely girls on tallbikes ride close past us, moving air against my body, and shout joyous "Yeaaa! We love yoooou! We loooove yooou!" A young couple joins the end of the promenade, taps me and asks,
"Hey, what's going on?"
I am ebullient; I am full of greasy, bubblin goodwill. "It's a second line for a longtime bartender here in the Quarter. Come on in and dance with us fo'while, darlin!"
Christ, there is music everywhere! I have never seen a life so supremely celebrated! Never seen so many people get it, that we are so damned fortunate to be able to count among our living blessings Friendship, Laughter, Love, and a hell of a lot of good Food and Dancin. As we make our way back to Harry's, back to where we started, folks are flatout cheerin!, whoopin and hollerin and shakin bootys to beat the devil. A couple of obviously-local guys step in line directly behind me and put their hands on my shoulder, nod & grin, grills all shinin, and start singin with the band, shoutin themselves bloody and loved. "Yeh!Yeh! When I layhay...mah burden dowowown!" The crowd's Joy is palpable, is a natural Force beside within between around us, and,
and I have not been in a nexus of Love like this in a very, very long time.
While I watch my new friends carry their compatriot's ashes down the street, dancing and pumping parasol points toward the sky, while I watch these people who've buried so many, who have more cause to grieve than most anybody in this country, I am so very, very humbled by their strength, by their staggering Love. I can't help but think of the last people I helped lay to rest, and today, today! I finally feel like I am bidding farewell to them in proper style.
Oh, you who call yourselves America, you UStians! Take a lesson from the beautiful people of New Orleans: Death is an ending. Not The End, mind you, for Life goes on and on and on, with or withoutcha.
With or withoutcha.
Come
join the Caaaab-aaaaa-raaaaaaaaay!
Lotta Death.
And suddenly,
I find myself in a town that understands how that is.
Got invited, a couple weeks ago, to participate in the second line of a jazz funeral for someone I'd never met. I was concerned about participating in what was such a personal event without prior knowledge of the deceased. Didn't want to intrude where the heart is so tender.
I'd been told, within my first night or two in New Orleans, that one of the bartenders at Harry's Corner was sick, hospitalized shortly before I moved to town. Three weeks later, one of the other bartenders, with that dazed look I now recognize a mile off, told me,
"Well, you heard about Freak, that he's been in the hospital."
"Yeah, of course! How's he doin?"
"He's dead."
"Oh jeezus.
"...Oh, jeezus, darlin, I'm so sorry."
"Yeah, y'know...
"I'm just tired of this shit.
"After Katrina, with all the death there, afterwards seemed like people just kept dyin. Had a friend...y'know, we couldn't get the things we needed, things were still so fucked up with the city. Had a friend who had a seizure one night. Had a seizure and died cause the ambulance couldn't get there for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes and she was dead. Of a seizure.
(and in a small, tired voice:)
"...I'm just sicka people dyin...
(*...sigh...*)
"So, look, we're gonna try and get together a second line for him this Sunday.
"Y'all should really come.
"Come down for it. Really."
Now, I'd bowed out of a lotta goings-on since I'd been in town; just didn't feel like bein in-the-swing-a-things social. But, I wasn't about to miss this. Not when the grieving, red-eyed and exhausted, had personally asked me to attend. Not when an hour of my time, an hour's worth of participation might provide a little comfort, put a tiny bit of fill in the gaping hole of Loss. I know how much those little things mean, even if you can't always remember 'em later.
Sunday, I dressed up purty, grabbed a parasol to combat the sun, and a nearly transparent hanky belonging to my dead father-in-law. Wasn't quite sure what to do with the hanky, but Otter told me, "You'll want it." Went down to the bar where people were gathering, where the Treme Brass Band was warming up, where heavy hearts and love were beginning to swell. I felt an emotional break coming soon; the air was thick with its impending eruption. One of the other bartenders from Harry's, squinty unaccustomed to the midday sun, spied me and came over to hug me. I was still a little unsure. My own experiences with Death in the Public Eye had not exactly been pleasant.
"Are you sure it's okay if I'm here? I mean, I never even met the guy."
"No, no, sweetheart, it's good you're here. You'll see.
"...You got an extra parasol upstairs?"
The band started playing on Chartres and Dumaine, right in front of the bar, and began to walk slowly down the street. The dirges with which they began, though written slow and heavy, did not weigh on us as much as elegies are wont to do. Notes deep slow sad respectful mournful, but somehow not feelin sorry for themselves. From the first bass drum shuffles, the first sousa-brass-bottom, it was obvious that this crowd understood to the bone how intractably Life goes on, with or withoutcha.
I stayed back as far as I could, bringing up the end of the line, mostly outta respect for the grieving, partly cause I wanted to see and hear as much as possible. The procession wound through the Vieux Carre, motorcycle cops on either end, and made its way slowly to the home of the deceased. People held hankies in the air, half-steppin to the beat. Soft. Comforting each other. When we reached the front door of the house, Freak's sweetheart took his ashes inside for a last tour, and then brought them back out. The crowd stilled while the bandleader, the diminutive bass drum player, began to sing in a faded, beautiful tenor,
"Just
a closer
wawk with theee..."
Some heads bowed. Most looked up and around, as if greeting the new ghost while bidding his body farewell. As the sweet threnody came to and end, the briefest of silences hung over around among us. Brief and pregnant. Like the pause at a rollercoaster's apex.
And when we began again to move?
Oh, that's when it became...
That's when I began to understand how Death lives in New Orleans: differently from any other place in this country, fer damn sure. The bass drum kicked up the tempo. The Sousaphone, improbably, became light on its feet, bouncing fat notes to the heavens and, progressively, every booty within ear shot right along with it. People clappin on those downbeats. Wavin hankies and twirlin parasols. Sweet dancin the second line, twirlin little circles, laughin mouths open to the sky.
As we wound through the tight neighborhood streets, we stopped at every bar the late lamented had worked in his many years here in the Quarter. At every bar, we stopped and payed respects. Former coworkers stepped out onto balconies and banquettes, grieving and glad they had had a chance to spend some of this man's life with him. One of the tavern owners brought out glasses of cold beer for the band and mourners, and lord was it welcome in that heat! We headed down Decatur for a few blocks; tourists staring, locals waving and grinning and dancing on the sidewalks as we passed. They knew we carried the dead, and so they danced. And danced!
On the sidewalk, I see a group of kids, aged maybe 10 to 15, hands full of shiny music, watching us and talking rapidly amongst themselves. They quickly come to a concensus and run, horns and drums in hand, to the front of the line, exchange a couple words with the bandleader, and then join the musicians, playing bright and joyful and fulla love. A block down, from the opposite side of the street, yet another band of kids joins the procession. The music has tripled, quadrupled in volume, and people are really startin to get involved.
Wellwishers and friends drift in and out of the cortege to hug each other and swap favorite stories about this beloved human. There is laughter everywhere. Two lovely girls on tallbikes ride close past us, moving air against my body, and shout joyous "Yeaaa! We love yoooou! We loooove yooou!" A young couple joins the end of the promenade, taps me and asks,
"Hey, what's going on?"
I am ebullient; I am full of greasy, bubblin goodwill. "It's a second line for a longtime bartender here in the Quarter. Come on in and dance with us fo'while, darlin!"
Christ, there is music everywhere! I have never seen a life so supremely celebrated! Never seen so many people get it, that we are so damned fortunate to be able to count among our living blessings Friendship, Laughter, Love, and a hell of a lot of good Food and Dancin. As we make our way back to Harry's, back to where we started, folks are flatout cheerin!, whoopin and hollerin and shakin bootys to beat the devil. A couple of obviously-local guys step in line directly behind me and put their hands on my shoulder, nod & grin, grills all shinin, and start singin with the band, shoutin themselves bloody and loved. "Yeh!Yeh! When I layhay...mah burden dowowown!" The crowd's Joy is palpable, is a natural Force beside within between around us, and,
and I have not been in a nexus of Love like this in a very, very long time.
While I watch my new friends carry their compatriot's ashes down the street, dancing and pumping parasol points toward the sky, while I watch these people who've buried so many, who have more cause to grieve than most anybody in this country, I am so very, very humbled by their strength, by their staggering Love. I can't help but think of the last people I helped lay to rest, and today, today! I finally feel like I am bidding farewell to them in proper style.
Oh, you who call yourselves America, you UStians! Take a lesson from the beautiful people of New Orleans: Death is an ending. Not The End, mind you, for Life goes on and on and on, with or withoutcha.
With or withoutcha.
Come
join the Caaaab-aaaaa-raaaaaaaaay!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Anticipatory Letter to Mama.
Mom.
Seriously.
I've been packing 7-10 boxes a day for the past week;
I haven't made a dent, not even a shoveled dimple, in the vast mountains of Otter's belongings.
(I'm not freaking out
I'm not freaking out
I'm not freaking out)
But I am freaking out.
Just a little.
We may have a super-awesome two-bedroom place in the Vieux Carre: high ceilings, bathtub, courtyard, owned by a nice semi-retired pharmacist-southern-gentleman; old old old building. We're second in line for the place (second line?) after a couple who lived there a few years ago, who are moving back to town, who may or may not (not! NOT!) want the old place. We'll see after the first of the month. Four days from now.
Time is growing short, and I feel like there's too too much to do.
I feel the next week or two will be absolutely beautiful and love-filled, a wonderful closure to our time here, and I am still anxious as all hell to get on the way.
Oh, Mama, there's so much to do, so much to tell, so much that I really haven't got time to relate because I need to actually be packing instead of quacking about how much packing I have left to do.
I can see the alligator eyes above the water line, and they are waiting for me,
putting an eye up for me.
Mockingbirds are flocking,
are following me around the cemetery,
are chatting up clouds of thick magnolia anticipation.
I am so sure I am doing the right thing,
the very air hangs heavy with promise and portent.
This dream into which I walk is preordained,
latent in my old and secret bones.
Here live the visible graves' nocturnal dancers,
keeping their Buddy Bolden beat in phalanges tapped on stone;
Here live tree flowers with once-human faces,
emitting the sweetest scent of putrefaction imaginable;
Here is where humans crawled back outta the drink
(the second time)
and where they may return.
Here lives and has lived the most inevitable girl in my head,
inscrutable and sweetscary.
Here is where I am validated.
Here is where I am supposed to be.
For now.
It is raining to beat hell here. Finally. We've been over 60 days without a drop, and our plants have suffered somethin awful. I am spending this blessed rainy day inside packing packing packing, maybe baking bread, definitely drinking tiny pot after tiny pot of cafe au lait (whose subtle flavors I am quickly mastering), and listening to as much music from my new home as I can stuff in my ears. Looking for as many renditions of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" as possible, and there are many many. Listening for subtleties of longing and devotion.
I miss you terribly.
There is so much happening to/with me on so many levels that I do not feel I can communicate any of it without eye and skin contact.
I am dancing with the thunder and dreaming the dreams that are my life, however or whyever these dreams have so blessed me.
Thank you for somehow identifying this dreamreality early and allowing me to see how I need to see, allowing me to grow within my own sacred ground, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense very often.
The Thunder is great today, showing off its lane domination and sporting its new bowling shoes.
Thunder gets all the turkeys.
The closer I get to New Orleans, the more nonsensesense my head makes.
I am evolving, or I am just now noticing.
I am doing what I am supposed to do.
I am calm in my deep parts,
...the parts that do not have to pack.
*sigh*
I love you, Mama.
I'm dreamy in my head, making costumes outta cobwebs, but my heart is large and sure, and I know I love you love you love you in ways I can never love another human being.
Thank you for choosing me (even if you didn't know you chose).
I love you.
-rd-
Seriously.
I've been packing 7-10 boxes a day for the past week;
I haven't made a dent, not even a shoveled dimple, in the vast mountains of Otter's belongings.
(I'm not freaking out
I'm not freaking out
I'm not freaking out)
But I am freaking out.
Just a little.
We may have a super-awesome two-bedroom place in the Vieux Carre: high ceilings, bathtub, courtyard, owned by a nice semi-retired pharmacist-southern-gentleman; old old old building. We're second in line for the place (second line?) after a couple who lived there a few years ago, who are moving back to town, who may or may not (not! NOT!) want the old place. We'll see after the first of the month. Four days from now.
Time is growing short, and I feel like there's too too much to do.
I feel the next week or two will be absolutely beautiful and love-filled, a wonderful closure to our time here, and I am still anxious as all hell to get on the way.
Oh, Mama, there's so much to do, so much to tell, so much that I really haven't got time to relate because I need to actually be packing instead of quacking about how much packing I have left to do.
I can see the alligator eyes above the water line, and they are waiting for me,
putting an eye up for me.
Mockingbirds are flocking,
are following me around the cemetery,
are chatting up clouds of thick magnolia anticipation.
I am so sure I am doing the right thing,
the very air hangs heavy with promise and portent.
This dream into which I walk is preordained,
latent in my old and secret bones.
Here live the visible graves' nocturnal dancers,
keeping their Buddy Bolden beat in phalanges tapped on stone;
Here live tree flowers with once-human faces,
emitting the sweetest scent of putrefaction imaginable;
Here is where humans crawled back outta the drink
(the second time)
and where they may return.
Here lives and has lived the most inevitable girl in my head,
inscrutable and sweetscary.
Here is where I am validated.
Here is where I am supposed to be.
For now.
It is raining to beat hell here. Finally. We've been over 60 days without a drop, and our plants have suffered somethin awful. I am spending this blessed rainy day inside packing packing packing, maybe baking bread, definitely drinking tiny pot after tiny pot of cafe au lait (whose subtle flavors I am quickly mastering), and listening to as much music from my new home as I can stuff in my ears. Looking for as many renditions of "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" as possible, and there are many many. Listening for subtleties of longing and devotion.
I miss you terribly.
There is so much happening to/with me on so many levels that I do not feel I can communicate any of it without eye and skin contact.
I am dancing with the thunder and dreaming the dreams that are my life, however or whyever these dreams have so blessed me.
Thank you for somehow identifying this dreamreality early and allowing me to see how I need to see, allowing me to grow within my own sacred ground, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense very often.
The Thunder is great today, showing off its lane domination and sporting its new bowling shoes.
Thunder gets all the turkeys.
The closer I get to New Orleans, the more nonsensesense my head makes.
I am evolving, or I am just now noticing.
I am doing what I am supposed to do.
I am calm in my deep parts,
...the parts that do not have to pack.
*sigh*
I love you, Mama.
I'm dreamy in my head, making costumes outta cobwebs, but my heart is large and sure, and I know I love you love you love you in ways I can never love another human being.
Thank you for choosing me (even if you didn't know you chose).
I love you.
-rd-
Thursday, May 8, 2008
First Kiss New Orleans
This is my first trip to New Orleans.
I find every bit as much Oxymoron as I expect,
but
not always where I expect to find it.
I also
find Serendipity,
Felicity,
and Coincidence,
and I realize,
beyond any skin or bone or flesh at all,
that this city is waiting for me,
that it can go on limpidly waiting and
will not be bothered in the slightest
if I should take a thousand years
or even
forget to come at all.
Its ghosts will remain and are willing willing willing
to tell all manner of Stories in form of Secrets, in form of Tall Tales, in form of involuntary Nightmumblings.
There is a strange Beauty about this city, beyond its romantic architecture, beyond its great moss-weeping trees, beyond everything that draws Dreamers & Seekers & Scalawags to its plumply velveted, jasmine-scented lap. I begin looking for a name for this ambiguous Beauty at the Jazz and Heritage Festival, when New Orleans' heart is purported to be at its finest.
*******
DAY 1.
First thing in, Thursday morning, right as the gates open at 11 a.m., I'm devouring Ms. Wanda Walker's Cochon de Lait po'boy with wet slaw, served up on a crusty third of a baguette; pork so sweet and soft, I could eat it toofless. Oh, it's so perfect. It's just what babies should taste like. I also manage a bite or two out of Otter's softshell crawfish po'boy, shells softer than kettle-fried chips, with fried sour gherkins and cabbage; crawfish never tasted so wickedly delicious. After breakfast, we're set for a day of music and food and music
and food and
and let's get it goin already, y'all.
On the Jazz & Heritage Stage, Red Hawk Hunters Mardi Gras Indians, resplendent in thousands of ostrich feathers, hand-beaded headdresses and chestplates, left to right, orange yellow fuschia green.
Kelly Guidry's sculptures (Breaux Bridge, LA) of elongated female forms. Beautiful winged mermaids, giant bugs, and the loveliest giant fishing lures. Dreamy whimsy. Romantically menacing.
Pirogues hand made by Tom Colvin, whose Cajun-French accent is thick enough to make communication difficult to my uneducated ears. The boats are joined without aid of screws or metal parts. They are flawless. I shed my first Fest Tears at this astoundingly skillful demonstration of a Beautiful and Dying Art.
New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy at Congo Square.
Squirrel Nut Zippers meets Gogol Bordello.
...That about sums it up.
Panorama Jazz Band at Gentilly. Sousaphone, Potosa accordion, clarinet, awesome (girl) tenor sax and trombone, drums, banjo. New Orleans/Island/Latin jazz outta the 1920s-40s. Danceable, mysterious, nostalgic, ultimately joyful.
A man with a tie-dyed prosthetic leg sits in front of us on the lawn, tapping his fingers against his personal rainbow.
Timbuktu Art Colony out of Ellenwood, GA. Silversmiths who make The Most Amazing Jewelry I have ever seen. Turquoise and amber and silver in sweeping, gracefully organic designs. Yum.
Strawberry cream sno-balls and strawberry lemonade.
Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers. Kermit singing "What A Wonderful World" makes me feel the magnolias in my hair. As the band plays and swings and jives and invites everyone listening to Up and Enjoy all that Life offers, the band is slowly joined by family members, children, everyone playing some instrument or another, everyone dancing. When they play "When It's Sleepytime Down South," Otter and I get all teary-eyed.
Randy Newman. "God bless the potholes down on Memory Lane." Funny as all hell, to my surprise. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country." Watch a guy camping next to us, who had set up his site early just to see Randy Newman, fall asleep about 15 minutes before the show starts, skin burning in the alcoholic afternoon. Newman has the quote of the day, about New Orleans: "It's important that America has a place like this, that knows what's important." When he sings "Louisiana 1927," a song about the worst river flood in U.S. history, there isn't a dry eye as far as I can see.
"It's not what you look like when you're doin whatchya doin!" is shouted over a thousand sunburned bodies by Tower of Power. It's their first time playing Jazz Fest, surely through some gross oversight. You wanna talk about some heavy bass- and horn-powered Funk, this is where it's at. Bootys shakin everywhere. Emilio Castillo shouting, "Let's see how many laws we can break tonight!" gives me the happy energy boost I need.
Fais-Do-Do stage has all the best dancers from across Louisiana. Swear. You can tell the natives by the movements that actually complement, actually belong with the music of CJ Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band.
And...and I'm dragged over to see,
to see...
Dude.
Deacon John.
Seriously.
Old New Orleans style is Original Cool.
Slow Fluid Graceful.
A seizure carved outta butter.
No segue, from the Crescent City to the (rock-infused) blue Delta with its flesh-palpitating rhythm and shake.
Sexagenarian duckwalking across stage.
Breaks a string playing so hard.
Plays his guitar with his teeth.
Whole band in black suits, white shirts, dark ties.
Moved from Sweet Slow Slide "Amazing Grace" into half-fast "Shake Your Moneymaker."
Sky full of sunset, lovebugs, and bubbles.
No metaphor.
Best act of the day.
This evening, walking around Faubourg Marigny, our friend Jay exclaims, "If you're anti-porch, you're antisocial!"
I am inclined to agree.
DAY 2.
Second of May, Friday, promise of rain from drift-cloudy skies.
Photography of Jerry Moran, his Jazz Titanic series. Patina'd and rusted clarinets, case after case, ghosts of the River.
Brienne Joubert's surreal Cities of the Dead.
Ghosty New Orleans, pre and post, of Libby Nevinger's eyes.
Christopher Porche-West, his full-sized doors home and history assemblage, hold us rapt and overwhelmed with its layers of meaning and innuendo. Tiny essay on the importance of teaching history to our society's children: what it means, how it affects us, how it shapes us and teaches us and connects us to something greater than the sum of our lives.
The Driskill Mountain Boys coulda been Grandad and his buddies gathered together to accompany a Saturday dance. Pure bluegrass untainted by pop country or rock & roll. I cry like a baby, missin my grandad's fiddle.
Joseph 'Zigaboo' Modeliste, original Meters drummer, brings the funk, as well as an injunction to every musician to include at least a single track, on any album they record, that is positive, constructive, and encouraging to folks who're listening. He said it was an obligation of artists to do their part to lift up their audiences, their communities, to spur them to Love and to Action.
...And goddamn, this man shakes a stick like no one but the King of the Funky Drums can!
The pomp and ego and pure fuckin skill of Trombone Shorty is a wonder. Straight up New Orleans Funk all over Congo Square. He and his tenor sax and trumpet players leave the stage and snake through the crowd for several minutes, blowin and struttin and makin a joyful noise. As soon as they return to the safety of the canopy, the sky lets loose the first of its baggage, and we begin to drink the rain. It lasts just long enough to cool our backs from relentless sunshine and warm, just long enough to begin softening the interior of the racetrack and turning everything to mud.
The photographs of Frank Relle catch our eyes; they emit some measure of the light and spirit we feel around us in this city. Nightphotos of old New Orleans houses.
We head over for a bit of Stevie Wonder before heading back to Congo Square for Michael Franti. Stevie gives a shout-out for Obama, asks for a moment of silence for Katrina victims, dead or displaced, a moment of silence for all loved one lost (cue crowd tears). There appears a rainbow in the still-wet downpour-threatening sky.
Michael Franti + Spearhead. Ohhh, goodness, this is the most wonderful show. It pours, in vehement fits and sporadic spurts, down and down and down; Franti leaves the stage, cordless microphone in hand, to share the deluge with us, to sing among us, with us. He sings "I Got Love for You," and we feel it, we love them and each other and ourselves. The water comes harder, and we outdance it. We are soaked, grinnin, full of love and rowdy exuberance. We are ready to heal all wounds with our lightnin feet. This show is a blessing. A perfect end to Friday at Jazz Fest.
Later, on Magazine, we take a friend's recommendation for an awesome taco spot and are happy, happy, happy with what food finds our mouths. Everything, down to the plain ol' black beans, has intense, creamy, adventurously homey flavors. I'm not telling what or where the place is; they looked like they had plenty of business and, honestly, I don't want to have to fight another ogling tourista for a spot for dinner. Our lagniappe happens to be our server, Sunshine, who is a charmingly petite competitive eater; she proudly pronounces that she can put away a 17-ounce burrito in under a minute. We are impressed.
DAY 3.
Traversing the city today, checking out neighborhoods, performing our own odd surveying. I am glad for the break from Jazz Fest's sea of mammals.
Tonight we check out Rebirth Brass Band at the Rock 'N' Bowl, a second-storey bowling-alley-concert-dancehall that shakes to beat hell when it's full of people dancing like the devil's after 'em.
Oh, Rebirth, thy name is Joy!
Goddamn, we have the greatest time here, for any number of reasons:
talkin with two septugenarian ladies about Atlanta strip clubs and the joys of pot-smoking;
dancing until we shake the house, top to bottom;
eatin turkey and andouille gumbo in the middle of all that jostlin and dancin;
fascinated watchin the lady behind the merch counter embroidering bowling shirts to order;
looking over at the lanes and realizing everyone bowling is dressed as some sorta royalty, from Disney's aryan-nations Cinderella to ye creepy olde Burger King, and they are drunk and dancin and ludicrously beautiful;
watching six burly guys (including one of our own drunk, kind-hearted, built-like-an-appliance friends), sweatin and strainin, maneuver a 400-pound man in a wheelchair backward down a storey-and-a-half flight of steep stairs, depositing the gentleman into a wildly applauding crowd. No one knows how the wide giant got up the stairs to begin with, and he is not exaclty forthcoming about the matter.
End the night with joyfully circuitous conversation in an untopped convertible,
arms of grand oaks and
lights of New Orleans
stretching around
and above
us.
Perfect.
DAY 4.
Jazz Fest again;
the Final Day,
the most ridiculously crowded day.
The fairgrounds overfloweth with people, with mud, with mud that smells a lot like horse-and people-shit combined, with trash, and with unbelievably good spirits, considering how fuckin tired and hungover everyone is. I spend my own suffering dreaming of eating more Houma fry bread than my tummy has thus far been able to accommodate, and I also repeatedly dream of eviscerating my mother-in-law. When distracted from that, I get to dig on
Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, bass-directed supercool funk, which helps shake off a lot of the previous night's party. We catch the beginning of Dumpstaphunk and the end of Galactic, those new grandaddies of N.O. funk, playing a high-energy set featuring some supagroovin tuba solos.
The only band I sit through, unattached, is The Raconteurs, though the sidereally related maternal hurricane is sitting next to me, which colors everything a little resentfully. Still, the band was pretty good altpoppowerrock, if you're into that sort of thing. They sorta sound like the Mars Volta if MV were, say, in junior high, recording in their parents' garage, praying for the experience and wisdom that will one day make them such an amazing band to watch and hear.
While waiting for the set to finish, we notice that dozens of birds are coordinating a grand mass of sticks and fluff atop several of the stadium lightposts. And the birds appear to be...parakeets. We later find out that New Orleans is home to wild Quaker parrots, indigenous to Argentina, now comfortably settled here, as well. Apparently, no one knows exactly how or why they're in New Orleans, but there are a hell of a lot of 'em. ...Huh.
The last day of Jazz Fest 2008 means:
We've gotta see the Neville Brothers.
Just gotta.
It's their first year closing Jazz Fest since 2005.
Apparently, there was some local ambivalence about the Brothers' belated performance:
"What took you so long?" and
"We're family; where you been while we need you like we do?"
seem to be the basic (painful) questions at the root of any popular hesitance.
Tell you what, though...
soon as that family opens their mouths?
soon as the first beats ride out on the humid evening air,
soon as the bass moves the mud,
soon as the keys color the clouds,
the entire crowd is one great embrace, one grand family, with its beauty and nasty and bicker and joy, these people are astoundingly happy to be together,
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.
And y'know, that kinda sums up the whole experience of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival: there's thousands of different people with different agendas and ideals, crammed into one blazingly hot, pretty grossly messy area for seven hours a day; there's a million-billion ways this thing could go wrong, wrong, wrong, but...
It doesn't.
I do not see a single argument while I am here.
I do not see any angry people.
I do not see a single person trying to meddle or control or interfere.
I do, however, see a lot of smilin, a lot of laughin
...a lot;
I see a lot of old-fashioned courteousness and instinctive lagniappe;
and I see a hell of a lot of people
happy to be together
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.
Welcome to New Orleans, baby.
Where you been?
Thanks to Internet Archive for the gorgeous live and 78rpm music that accompanied this transcription and translation. Ma Rainey, King Oliver, Michael Franti, Ethel Waters, and on and on and on. Thank you for making these available to the world.
I find every bit as much Oxymoron as I expect,
but
not always where I expect to find it.
I also
find Serendipity,
Felicity,
and Coincidence,
and I realize,
beyond any skin or bone or flesh at all,
that this city is waiting for me,
that it can go on limpidly waiting and
will not be bothered in the slightest
if I should take a thousand years
or even
forget to come at all.
Its ghosts will remain and are willing willing willing
to tell all manner of Stories in form of Secrets, in form of Tall Tales, in form of involuntary Nightmumblings.
There is a strange Beauty about this city, beyond its romantic architecture, beyond its great moss-weeping trees, beyond everything that draws Dreamers & Seekers & Scalawags to its plumply velveted, jasmine-scented lap. I begin looking for a name for this ambiguous Beauty at the Jazz and Heritage Festival, when New Orleans' heart is purported to be at its finest.
*******
DAY 1.
First thing in, Thursday morning, right as the gates open at 11 a.m., I'm devouring Ms. Wanda Walker's Cochon de Lait po'boy with wet slaw, served up on a crusty third of a baguette; pork so sweet and soft, I could eat it toofless. Oh, it's so perfect. It's just what babies should taste like. I also manage a bite or two out of Otter's softshell crawfish po'boy, shells softer than kettle-fried chips, with fried sour gherkins and cabbage; crawfish never tasted so wickedly delicious. After breakfast, we're set for a day of music and food and music
and food and
and let's get it goin already, y'all.
On the Jazz & Heritage Stage, Red Hawk Hunters Mardi Gras Indians, resplendent in thousands of ostrich feathers, hand-beaded headdresses and chestplates, left to right, orange yellow fuschia green.
Kelly Guidry's sculptures (Breaux Bridge, LA) of elongated female forms. Beautiful winged mermaids, giant bugs, and the loveliest giant fishing lures. Dreamy whimsy. Romantically menacing.
Pirogues hand made by Tom Colvin, whose Cajun-French accent is thick enough to make communication difficult to my uneducated ears. The boats are joined without aid of screws or metal parts. They are flawless. I shed my first Fest Tears at this astoundingly skillful demonstration of a Beautiful and Dying Art.
New Orleans Rhythm Conspiracy at Congo Square.
Squirrel Nut Zippers meets Gogol Bordello.
...That about sums it up.
Panorama Jazz Band at Gentilly. Sousaphone, Potosa accordion, clarinet, awesome (girl) tenor sax and trombone, drums, banjo. New Orleans/Island/Latin jazz outta the 1920s-40s. Danceable, mysterious, nostalgic, ultimately joyful.
A man with a tie-dyed prosthetic leg sits in front of us on the lawn, tapping his fingers against his personal rainbow.
Timbuktu Art Colony out of Ellenwood, GA. Silversmiths who make The Most Amazing Jewelry I have ever seen. Turquoise and amber and silver in sweeping, gracefully organic designs. Yum.
Strawberry cream sno-balls and strawberry lemonade.
Kermit Ruffins and the Barbecue Swingers. Kermit singing "What A Wonderful World" makes me feel the magnolias in my hair. As the band plays and swings and jives and invites everyone listening to Up and Enjoy all that Life offers, the band is slowly joined by family members, children, everyone playing some instrument or another, everyone dancing. When they play "When It's Sleepytime Down South," Otter and I get all teary-eyed.
Randy Newman. "God bless the potholes down on Memory Lane." Funny as all hell, to my surprise. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country." Watch a guy camping next to us, who had set up his site early just to see Randy Newman, fall asleep about 15 minutes before the show starts, skin burning in the alcoholic afternoon. Newman has the quote of the day, about New Orleans: "It's important that America has a place like this, that knows what's important." When he sings "Louisiana 1927," a song about the worst river flood in U.S. history, there isn't a dry eye as far as I can see.
"It's not what you look like when you're doin whatchya doin!" is shouted over a thousand sunburned bodies by Tower of Power. It's their first time playing Jazz Fest, surely through some gross oversight. You wanna talk about some heavy bass- and horn-powered Funk, this is where it's at. Bootys shakin everywhere. Emilio Castillo shouting, "Let's see how many laws we can break tonight!" gives me the happy energy boost I need.
Fais-Do-Do stage has all the best dancers from across Louisiana. Swear. You can tell the natives by the movements that actually complement, actually belong with the music of CJ Chenier & the Red Hot Louisiana Band.
And...and I'm dragged over to see,
to see...
Dude.
Deacon John.
Seriously.
Old New Orleans style is Original Cool.
Slow Fluid Graceful.
A seizure carved outta butter.
No segue, from the Crescent City to the (rock-infused) blue Delta with its flesh-palpitating rhythm and shake.
Sexagenarian duckwalking across stage.
Breaks a string playing so hard.
Plays his guitar with his teeth.
Whole band in black suits, white shirts, dark ties.
Moved from Sweet Slow Slide "Amazing Grace" into half-fast "Shake Your Moneymaker."
Sky full of sunset, lovebugs, and bubbles.
No metaphor.
Best act of the day.
This evening, walking around Faubourg Marigny, our friend Jay exclaims, "If you're anti-porch, you're antisocial!"
I am inclined to agree.
DAY 2.
Second of May, Friday, promise of rain from drift-cloudy skies.
Photography of Jerry Moran, his Jazz Titanic series. Patina'd and rusted clarinets, case after case, ghosts of the River.
Brienne Joubert's surreal Cities of the Dead.
Ghosty New Orleans, pre and post, of Libby Nevinger's eyes.
Christopher Porche-West, his full-sized doors home and history assemblage, hold us rapt and overwhelmed with its layers of meaning and innuendo. Tiny essay on the importance of teaching history to our society's children: what it means, how it affects us, how it shapes us and teaches us and connects us to something greater than the sum of our lives.
The Driskill Mountain Boys coulda been Grandad and his buddies gathered together to accompany a Saturday dance. Pure bluegrass untainted by pop country or rock & roll. I cry like a baby, missin my grandad's fiddle.
Joseph 'Zigaboo' Modeliste, original Meters drummer, brings the funk, as well as an injunction to every musician to include at least a single track, on any album they record, that is positive, constructive, and encouraging to folks who're listening. He said it was an obligation of artists to do their part to lift up their audiences, their communities, to spur them to Love and to Action.
...And goddamn, this man shakes a stick like no one but the King of the Funky Drums can!
The pomp and ego and pure fuckin skill of Trombone Shorty is a wonder. Straight up New Orleans Funk all over Congo Square. He and his tenor sax and trumpet players leave the stage and snake through the crowd for several minutes, blowin and struttin and makin a joyful noise. As soon as they return to the safety of the canopy, the sky lets loose the first of its baggage, and we begin to drink the rain. It lasts just long enough to cool our backs from relentless sunshine and warm, just long enough to begin softening the interior of the racetrack and turning everything to mud.
The photographs of Frank Relle catch our eyes; they emit some measure of the light and spirit we feel around us in this city. Nightphotos of old New Orleans houses.
We head over for a bit of Stevie Wonder before heading back to Congo Square for Michael Franti. Stevie gives a shout-out for Obama, asks for a moment of silence for Katrina victims, dead or displaced, a moment of silence for all loved one lost (cue crowd tears). There appears a rainbow in the still-wet downpour-threatening sky.
Michael Franti + Spearhead. Ohhh, goodness, this is the most wonderful show. It pours, in vehement fits and sporadic spurts, down and down and down; Franti leaves the stage, cordless microphone in hand, to share the deluge with us, to sing among us, with us. He sings "I Got Love for You," and we feel it, we love them and each other and ourselves. The water comes harder, and we outdance it. We are soaked, grinnin, full of love and rowdy exuberance. We are ready to heal all wounds with our lightnin feet. This show is a blessing. A perfect end to Friday at Jazz Fest.
Later, on Magazine, we take a friend's recommendation for an awesome taco spot and are happy, happy, happy with what food finds our mouths. Everything, down to the plain ol' black beans, has intense, creamy, adventurously homey flavors. I'm not telling what or where the place is; they looked like they had plenty of business and, honestly, I don't want to have to fight another ogling tourista for a spot for dinner. Our lagniappe happens to be our server, Sunshine, who is a charmingly petite competitive eater; she proudly pronounces that she can put away a 17-ounce burrito in under a minute. We are impressed.
DAY 3.
Traversing the city today, checking out neighborhoods, performing our own odd surveying. I am glad for the break from Jazz Fest's sea of mammals.
Tonight we check out Rebirth Brass Band at the Rock 'N' Bowl, a second-storey bowling-alley-concert-dancehall that shakes to beat hell when it's full of people dancing like the devil's after 'em.
Oh, Rebirth, thy name is Joy!
Goddamn, we have the greatest time here, for any number of reasons:
talkin with two septugenarian ladies about Atlanta strip clubs and the joys of pot-smoking;
dancing until we shake the house, top to bottom;
eatin turkey and andouille gumbo in the middle of all that jostlin and dancin;
fascinated watchin the lady behind the merch counter embroidering bowling shirts to order;
looking over at the lanes and realizing everyone bowling is dressed as some sorta royalty, from Disney's aryan-nations Cinderella to ye creepy olde Burger King, and they are drunk and dancin and ludicrously beautiful;
watching six burly guys (including one of our own drunk, kind-hearted, built-like-an-appliance friends), sweatin and strainin, maneuver a 400-pound man in a wheelchair backward down a storey-and-a-half flight of steep stairs, depositing the gentleman into a wildly applauding crowd. No one knows how the wide giant got up the stairs to begin with, and he is not exaclty forthcoming about the matter.
End the night with joyfully circuitous conversation in an untopped convertible,
arms of grand oaks and
lights of New Orleans
stretching around
and above
us.
Perfect.
DAY 4.
Jazz Fest again;
the Final Day,
the most ridiculously crowded day.
The fairgrounds overfloweth with people, with mud, with mud that smells a lot like horse-and people-shit combined, with trash, and with unbelievably good spirits, considering how fuckin tired and hungover everyone is. I spend my own suffering dreaming of eating more Houma fry bread than my tummy has thus far been able to accommodate, and I also repeatedly dream of eviscerating my mother-in-law. When distracted from that, I get to dig on
Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk, bass-directed supercool funk, which helps shake off a lot of the previous night's party. We catch the beginning of Dumpstaphunk and the end of Galactic, those new grandaddies of N.O. funk, playing a high-energy set featuring some supagroovin tuba solos.
The only band I sit through, unattached, is The Raconteurs, though the sidereally related maternal hurricane is sitting next to me, which colors everything a little resentfully. Still, the band was pretty good altpoppowerrock, if you're into that sort of thing. They sorta sound like the Mars Volta if MV were, say, in junior high, recording in their parents' garage, praying for the experience and wisdom that will one day make them such an amazing band to watch and hear.
While waiting for the set to finish, we notice that dozens of birds are coordinating a grand mass of sticks and fluff atop several of the stadium lightposts. And the birds appear to be...parakeets. We later find out that New Orleans is home to wild Quaker parrots, indigenous to Argentina, now comfortably settled here, as well. Apparently, no one knows exactly how or why they're in New Orleans, but there are a hell of a lot of 'em. ...Huh.
The last day of Jazz Fest 2008 means:
We've gotta see the Neville Brothers.
Just gotta.
It's their first year closing Jazz Fest since 2005.
Apparently, there was some local ambivalence about the Brothers' belated performance:
"What took you so long?" and
"We're family; where you been while we need you like we do?"
seem to be the basic (painful) questions at the root of any popular hesitance.
Tell you what, though...
soon as that family opens their mouths?
soon as the first beats ride out on the humid evening air,
soon as the bass moves the mud,
soon as the keys color the clouds,
the entire crowd is one great embrace, one grand family, with its beauty and nasty and bicker and joy, these people are astoundingly happy to be together,
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.
And y'know, that kinda sums up the whole experience of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival: there's thousands of different people with different agendas and ideals, crammed into one blazingly hot, pretty grossly messy area for seven hours a day; there's a million-billion ways this thing could go wrong, wrong, wrong, but...
It doesn't.
I do not see a single argument while I am here.
I do not see any angry people.
I do not see a single person trying to meddle or control or interfere.
I do, however, see a lot of smilin, a lot of laughin
...a lot;
I see a lot of old-fashioned courteousness and instinctive lagniappe;
and I see a hell of a lot of people
happy to be together
today,
right now,
doin what they doin.
Welcome to New Orleans, baby.
Where you been?
Thanks to Internet Archive for the gorgeous live and 78rpm music that accompanied this transcription and translation. Ma Rainey, King Oliver, Michael Franti, Ethel Waters, and on and on and on. Thank you for making these available to the world.
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