I’ve been to New Orleans, Nola, The Crescent City, The Big Easy, the City care forgot, at least that last one I believe is the quote.
I’ve been immersing myself into New Orleans life and culture. I’ve been gone now almost a week and still hung up on it. I felt there was too much to do in the time I was there. You could spend weeks walking the streets solely to look up at the architecture. It’s incredible. Never mind the drinking and culture and history, although those things too. You could spend a life there.
A bartender told me, “This place will either suck you in or spit you out.” That was a perfect description. While a cliche line, it’s true. Perhaps my current obsession and love affair for the city is trite as my time there was brief, but my infatuation has done nothing but grow. I bought one of those “Images of America” books on New Orleans, there’s more than one of course, but I bought the general “New Orleans” one. They’re $20 a piece so it’ll be a bit, but I blew through it. They’re short, mostly images with descriptions of spots around town of historic significance, but in my opinion, your best bang for buck in terms of a shotgun-style summary of the city’s long history.
I watched a four part history of Katrina a year after it happened, A Spike Lee affair. It was roughly for hours, all in one night. I want to watch another he did in 2010, five years post Hurricane. I made a point to visit the memorial in the city in the Cemetery district. Well, it’s the Garden District? I believe, it’s not really called the cemetery district but that’s what I’ll call it, there’s a ton of them. I guess this isn’t building my case for an obsessive is it?
I think my love of it came about when I realized I could immediately see myself living there for the foreseeable future as a writer. Being a nobody, playing open mics, in the french quarter at times, moving around wherever I please in small loft apartments throughout the city, spending hours smoking cigarettes in the many courtyards hidden behind the many walls of the houses there. Being a nobody frequenting bars, meeting characters, moving on, drink in hand to the next. I did this once myself when I was there. Nobody was around in most of the many bars throughout the popular bits until 3 or 4 at least. Some never sleep.
This was a longer thought, but that’s all for now.