Monday in the French Quarter was strangely quiet. No more bands playing in schoolyards or spontaneously gathering to jam on street corners. Dancers, with damaged soles, on airplanes or back at work, brass band music reverberating in their brains.
Even Bourbon Street, site of screaming debauchery and lurking menace was dulled to a hum, the sidewalks smelling as if the weekend reprobates had been washed into the sewer with a mixture of beer and Simple Green.
Tarot readers and psychics scurried to every part of the Quarter. I assume fore-telling to those that engaged in the excessive bacchanals on Bourbon Street over the weekend that they would indeed, be able to recover their dignity, find true love and make a quick fortune (for another $50 donation).
During the Festival, New Orleans was a cacophony of sounds: shrieking boom boxes, screaming revelers, beggars and drunken fraternities--surely you had walked into an Hieronymus Bosch painting (ubiquitous pictures of crawfish and alligators adding to the imagery). When all of a sudden, those discordant notes and excruciating sounds would resolve into the most beautiful music you ever heard and you would be compelled to stop in the middle of the street and dance or stamp your foot or bob your head and your heart would swell and then you were in heaven and you wondered why anyone would ever want to be anywhere else on the planet. Continue on Royal street or Chartres to Frenchman Street, assiduously avoid Bourbon, and you are serenaded on your journey by one incredible band after another. You begin to think that you should never walk around a city without heavenly live music accompanying you ever again. Monday's quiet was shocking in a way, although the shopkeepers told us that the respite would be short-lived.
We were blessed with beautiful weather on our trip, I usually like to pack some LA weather in my suitcase (outside pocket) and bring it with me. It doesn't weigh much. I was grateful to be comfortable, but from all my reading about the south, I believe that its history and literature are inextricably bound to the weather. So I missed experiencing the city in its true form (missed, but was happy to miss it). Sultry is the descriptor of the usual weather -- imagining Stanley Kowalski screaming STELLA on a chilly California evening isn't quite the same. Make no mistake, I was very happy to be comfortable, just a little curious because the climate, in my mind, informs the literature and the music to some extent.
New Orleans is a city of noise. It is also a city of stories and magic and tension. We were fortunate to have fantastic tour guides and learn about many of the fascinating people who shaped the city- I now have an extensive reading (and writing) list. Also, I had many questions about Voodoo, which briefly, was the result of blending of African religions with Catholicism. I had always wondered about that as was happy to learn more.
I loved chatting with the artists. I know they were creating for tourists, but they were also committed to their art and talked to me about their visions or babbled randomly. One artist gave me the four rules for staying alive while visiting NOLA. He said, if you break any of these rules, you won't make it out. The last rule was: "never go off with, or try to help a stranger, no matter how small or weak they might seem, in New Orleans they won't just mug you like they do in LA..." and that reminded me of the Tennessee Williams story, "Summer and Smoke" and so I was satisfied in a creepy sort of way.
This trip would have been nothing without our friends and guides. I feel that without them, Thomas and I might have been washed off Bourbon Street with the beer and Simple Green. They showed us the best places to hear music, to eat, to drink, to shop, to see architecture and nature. Thank you, my friends, guides and great traveling companions, Sharon, Sheri, Brian, Conrad, Marsha! We packed so much fun and wonderfulness into four days because of you!
Below is one of my favorite signs that we saw on our explorations. It explains a lot!
