Do you know what it means to be New Orleans?
Some friends stopped by the other night and we were discussing The Wire and Treme. Some of the issues I have had with The Wire were confirmed – the stilted dialogue, the acting that suddenly feels slightly less fluid than it should, the gratuitous lesbian scenes, the over macho/homophobic black and white character depictions. And yet it is very compelling for a TV drama. Treme on the other hand gets slammed by its insider New Orleans crap.
There is a contingent of people who live in NOLA who aspire too much to be in the know – to some sort of obnoxious level – almost reminding me of when Californians started sporting a “native” bumper sticker to indicate they were born there – I had a friend who was want to say she was fourth generation Californian – as if that was impactful. I can’t have a native bumper sticker as I was born in Miami but New Orleans is my home.
Lately I’ve been having a good many New Orleans moments and I credit them to a sort of lengthening of time in my mind. When I have too much to do, and am stressed, things flash in and out of my mind in nano seconds and nothing gets a moment of reflection. Lately, I’ve found some sort of harmony where I am able to have space where thoughts appear, linger, and then slide under some magic carpet in the recesses.
The other day for example, I was driving, and I saw and heard the trolley car ambling down the tracks, City Park was on my right, and WWOZ was playing Celtic music on its morning show and I had a moment there. Then on another day, I was driving home from the Bywater and coming down Esplanade Avenue through the Quarter and I looked up and saw a street sign that said, “No parking on the median (neutral ground)…” and had to laugh because obviously the signs were standard across the country, but they had to have subtitles for New Orleanians who call the median, neutral ground from the years of the Spanish and French occupancy.
We talked about the fact that New Orleans the city has always had this thumb snubbing way of dealing with the federal government as in when the rest of the country raised the drinking age to 21, we stubbornly clung to the 18 year old – if you can defend this country you can drink rule – and lost lots of federal money for highways. And yet when the levees failed, we were looking to the feds to bail us out.
I passed the cemetery on City Park Avenue a few days ago and was looking at all the above ground tombs and WWOZ was playing a Louis Armstrong tune and the sky looked like it was going to storm for days. Another New Orleans moments.
I get the second line list emailed to me and haven’t been to one lately. I get updates from several clubs about the great music that is playing and these days can’t seem to get to anything I want to hear. I went by Swirl on Friday night but had to leave about three minutes later because I had Tin and well, sigh, that is an adult playground, not for kids on Friday nights.
I know all the insider New Orleans stuff and yet I don’t feel like an insider so much as I feel that this is home for me and my family and where we belong. As for the rest of it – the cool factor – the hip stuff – the stuff that Treme is trying too hard to convey – well, who cares, really – you can’t consume New Orleans, you just have to be New Orleans, or not?
A colleague is visiting New Orleans and she said to me yesterday, who could come here and not fall in love with this city? And I laughed – I have known a few.