Lessons from New Orleans

I was blessed with the opportunity to pick up a shoot in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago; my first time. Although I was a little disappointed that I didn’t have a previous basis for comparison, I was looking forward to having my first experience with the city in its post-Katrina element.

Planted in the center of the French Quarter, I didn’t anticipate that I would see a whole lot of ‘damage’. After all, the media’s been reporting that the French Quarter is basically up and running. Good as new.

The first night I ambled my way down Bourbon Street. Me and my stellar sense of direction: I didn’t realize that I was on Bourbon Street, and was baffled as to why everyone was drinking smoothies at 11:00PM. “I didn’t realize New Orleans was such a smoothie mecca.” Ahhh,, I’m on Bourbon Street. Those aren’t smoothies! (This inner gullibility has yet to run its course. Me thinks it’s with me for the long haul.)

Anyhow, I don’t have much of a relationship with blues music. I don’t like it. I don’t dislike it. I simply haven’t listened to that much. And I have no idea the name of the place; some little whole in the wall (my favorites), but the vibrations, the feel, the eloquent wavelengths that were pouring out of this place literally drew me in like a magnet. I had no intentions of drinking, but ended up at the bar so that I could hang around for the next set.

I ended up alongside a demolition crew from Atlanta and Alabama. “Yup. Back home, the KKK still marches in our Christmas parade,” laughed the thin, weathered Alabamian. “That’s why I don’t live there anymore.”

“Good for you,” I replied.

Their workday starts at 4:30am and every day they tear down people’s houses. That day had been a particularly hard one on the crew. The house belonged to an African American WWII vet. He came back to the house to watch the demolition; showed the crew his battle wounds, the scars that patterned his body. He held onto a few pictures that he had managed to salvage. And he stood in what used to be his front yard and cried for four hours while his house was laid to rest.

“Now the thing for you to understand is that this man was not just cryin’ for hisself or for his house. This man was crying for this country,” the crew leader explained as his dark brown eyes disappeared into the straw that he twisted through his drink.

And the blues band strummed in for the start of set number three. My call time was a mere five hours away, but I was nowhere near ready to leave.

The shoot itself was moderately busy. I was able to get out for a couple more snippets. I managed a walk down to Café Du Monde for a beignet and a café au lait. Yummy. I observed a lot of empty restaurants, empty bars, empty shops. Every other block or so I’d stumble across a storefront covered by a bright neon sign declaring “another victim of Katrina”. How are these people making a living I kept wondering?

I saw a lot of sadness in New Orleans, but I saw a lot more perseverance. From the tarot readers perched out on their folding chairs to the artists selling their work on the streets. These people can really teach me something about acceptance.

Heading back to the hotel, I encountered another blues group. This one was much younger and they were singing in the streets. Worn, tired, and hungry, they poured out not anger and frustration, but amazingly beautiful performance art.

Damn. These kids have got it right.

Thank you, New Orleans.