Remembering New Orleans
This could also be called The Obligatory Hurricane Katrina Post, but fuck that: We?ve lost a national treasure. Nothing since 9/11 can compare to this loss. I don?t care what anyone says.
Bourbon Street is dead. Long live Bourbon Street.
I?ve been to New Orleans twice: Once in 1999, on a whim for a Project Greenlight meetup (I was a budding screenwriter then?and the show still held promise). The second time I visited with my friend Tony in 2001. It was, by far, a more revealing and interesting experience.
Both times I visited the Garden District, both times I visited Canal and Bourbon Street, and both times I learned to appreciate the raw culture of New Orleans. Before I visited the once great city, I didn?t really understand what culture was. I mean, culture is what you make of it right? No, it isn?t. It?s ingrained in the surroundings, it?s in the music and the buildings and people. It?s that intangible something that makes you smile and appreciate what makes up your environment. The meshing of music and people and history was astounding.
The age of New Orleans struck me as the most interesting thing. All of the buildings, having been constructed on a swamp basically, were sinking. Doorways were askew. Sidewalks were cracked. Shelves leaned one direction or another. And I couldn?t get enough of it. I have never been so enthralled with the origins of a certain place. I mean, it?s not like I?m going ga-ga over who founded Knoxville. But New Orleans was altogether different.
It is, or was, my favorite city. And now it sits in disease-ridden, contaminated water. The same water that had threatened it on all sides, the same water that ran over its boundaries, the same water that now ruins everything that made the city great. To restore New Orleans will simply try to recreate the candy shell around a melted M&M: It contains the same ingredients, but it?s not the same. It will never be. And it makes me sad.
I?ll be honest: The first time I visited for friends and tits and only got the former. The second time I got both, but the friendship was stronger and the bars were much more exciting. Me and Tony saw the sites, ate like kings, walked off pounds and watched fireworks in the humid July 4th celebration. Afterwards we would get smashingly drunk, I would get kicked out of a club or two, and we would stumble our way down Canal back to our roach-infested Days Inn. The Days Inn that is now rotting from the inside out. The bars that will be replaced by stainless steel furnishings instead of old wooden trunks the size of railroad ties. The piano bars and the cigars and the food and the music everything that made New Orleans New Or-fuckin-leans.
The same New Orleans that I miss terribly
The same New Orleans that needs our help.
The same New Orleans that will never be the same again. Never.
I?d sooner chew my leg off
Than be trapped in this
1 Comments:
While I agree that New Orleans will never be quite the same, lets not nail the coffin shut quite yet. I have heard the argument that this will kill the city, things won't be the same etc. But I say "Nay," this is New Orleans. It will always be New Orleans. Covered in water or half naked drunk people, it will always be New Orleans.
Right now it's wounded. But the name alone will bring people back. The name alone will keep it alive. Yea, it might come back with some cement where a crooked old sidewalk might have been. But that's the thing about culture: You can't really kill it. This will just be the next chapter in the story of New Orleans. This will only add to its culture.
So cry not for the death of New Orleans. Cry for its sickness. Cry for its damage. Cry for its people. But celebrate the city for its past and the future that it will return to. Viva New Orleans.
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