How'm I gonna make my way with a heart so heavy? How'm I gonna get back home when I can't find the road? And how'm I gonna stop this pain when I can't see how deep it goes ...? Just because they won't fit in the space allotted, there are 3 songs that I can't stop playing, that make me remember all that I saw and felt when I was in New Orleans - the hurt and the hope, the ease.
Aaron Neville joined with John Mayer to do one achingly good song, "Heart So Heavy." This one song made me appreciate the butterscotch-eriness that is Aaron's voice. Harry Connick, Jr.'s got a sweet-soundin' voice. It's earnest andn clear as he sings "City Beneath the Sea." Take me. Take me... And lastly, Van Morrison. What a man he is, and he's another one of those artists that I know so many of his songs without ever really having gotten to know him. His "Blue And Green" just rolls ... like the waves of Lake Pontchartrain upon the lakeside shores, like the overcast clouds on the Sunday when we took the "devastation tour..."
I'm still trying to fathom how great in scope 30 square miles is and what it looked like to witness that great an area submerged in water. Or to be there as the water had just made its way out, because what I saw, while not pristine, was definitely cleaner than it'd been. An entire city's exuberant existence can now be charted by its water lines dirtily etched on anything that was able to withstand the force of nature that water actually is.
We were taken to where that levee broke - the 17th St. Canal levee - and left to imagine what once was. Houses decimated, shifted and shoved from their foundations just like the people that once called these places home. House after house bore its own scar, that dreaded spray-painted "x" that tells us the story of the liquid plague that left no one or nothing dry or whole or alive.
On some streets it looked like some houses were spared, in the sense that they were just flooded, while right next door or just across the street were houses that were sacrificed to the crashing (and later creeping) waters. We crested a hill in onne lakeside neighborhood, rolling over it like we were on a roller coaster and I gasped feeling an instant swelling in my chest and heart - the sheer expanse of Lake Pontchartrain took all my breath away. It looked like we were going to coast right into it, and watching the waves crash into the seemingly seamless shore made me wonder - what must it have looked like seeing all that water churn, swelling and leering at the shores ...? To cross bridges and roadways that succumbed, swallowed whole by waters from a not-so-distant sea; engulfed.
The ways along that poorly not-so-planned levee; the home and neighborhood of my hosts; the Ninth Ward; the tattered roof of the Superdome (which upon my initial passing caused me to gasp and hold my breath in fear of inhaling any of the squalor that I feel so surely has tainted that place); the rows upon rows, neighborhoods, streets and miles of houses (homes!), everything ravaged, if not raped, by waters, and looted by the lost, now all waiting - so many waiting - to be healed by becoming homes again.
What a sense of humor that abounds, wicked and raw. I saw fridge magnets at Jazzfest that were miniature versions of the real refuse-filled, vile fridges that stunk up the city before. The owners of what was once a really nice house hung a huge banner revealing to all that their insurance company had paid roughly $10k for their house, as if it was some sort of favor or something. Signs still hung advising looters that they'd be shot. There was Dr. Bob's (a local artist) place where he'd probably painted the "I'll shoot your sorry ass," in the heat of the moment, even though he's otherwise known as living by his creed, "Be Nice or Leave." Dr. Bob makes art out of what the rest of us deem to be garbage. He got caught while busy "working" in the midst of all the looting and the police beat him so badly, but there he was at Jazzfest grubbin' and a-greetin' all who passed. Driving by his place I fell in love with his welcome sign which basically said you could see his him and his work "by chance or appointment."
There are those t-shirts and bumper stickers I've already mentioned below, there's the food, there are the people and then there's the music - so broad in its scope that I liken it to a big mama whose outstretched arms beckon you onn into beats and rhythms that felt instantly like home to me; the music was so broad that weekend that it's little wonder the mighty Mississippi River caresses its shores.
It's so difficult for me to even come close to capturing all that I saw and experienced, which is why it's been a long time for me to get all this posted. It was certainly the best of times, but also the worst, seeing the destruction. But I can't stop thinking and telling anyone who'll listen that everyone should just go. Like any great American city you should go to see it, but I want you to go see about it, too. Every person in this country needs to see what has happened to us - to be reminded of so many things, but namely that rich or poor, chocolate or not, this land is our land. That is us down there singin' and struttin', strivin' and survivin'. Us.
I miss the hospitality of the opened doors and windows in the French Quarter, where sounds and smells floated out to say hello. I miss the friendliness of "The City that Care Forgot," where I discovered that the people really are big on the easy-going, livin' all carefree. (Laissez-faire is good to me.) My hosts were good to me, too, offering their home away from their real home to me as if I'd just been found. This city cares if you come, it wants you to and it needs you, too. It's just a place that is as good as its people, which is why, just after one visit, I know what it means to miss New Orleans when that's where you've left a piece of your heart ...