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new orleans: piss-and-vomit-saturated burbon is hardly a representation of the rest and all its loveliness. there's the dripping sleepy wealth of the garden district, pocketed with cemeteries that locked before we made it in. Raindrops evaporated off the sidewalk, filling the thick air with the odor of wet earth. nothing makes more sense than beautiful old houses mingling...they gain humility as they age, and every so often a skeleton lies in their midst. there is nothing here that is out of place, it all has been chosen perfectly, the set for a movie, dirty and sleepy and elegant. Time, decay, and humidity. Raw oysters and raspberry lamb's. A thin sheen of sweat on everything, buildings even.
Frenchman way is where real music happens, and you see only locals. There was a skinny washboard player whose grey-brown skin looked like an overwashed favorite t-shirt, soft to the touch. I know a warshboard player back home, the Rev. Billy Hults, and the thimbles on his fingers turn him into a god, the chest sticks out, head tilts back. This man is. I'm guessing, about the same age, both men survive on a steady diet of alcohol and cigarrettes, so far as I know. Fragility dissolves on stage, though, when you're wowing every cat in the room. When everyone who's there is there because for you.
The guitar player, my escort tells me, can't wait to go home and shoot up. That's true, too-- I didn't notice the bandages until they were pointed out. Burbon blares a few blocks beyond, and we retire to a hookah bar where I meet a girl who was in peace corps and is now in yale law. She has pretty dreadlocks and is from the city and her younger brother, Langston, reminds me of my own-- outspoken, courageous and thoughtless and charming. they are there to celeb rate their mother's birthday. She wears a fanny-pack and an ugly Hawaiian shirt. Her short, thin, white hair is close-cropped and here next to her sleek young grown-up children she seems out of place in the dim, stylish haze. I can't imagine having children of another race-- would they always think of themselves as different, as not-of-me? She might be lonely, and then again, it may be that none of this might have ever occured to her in her whole life.
Frenchman way is where real music happens, and you see only locals. There was a skinny washboard player whose grey-brown skin looked like an overwashed favorite t-shirt, soft to the touch. I know a warshboard player back home, the Rev. Billy Hults, and the thimbles on his fingers turn him into a god, the chest sticks out, head tilts back. This man is. I'm guessing, about the same age, both men survive on a steady diet of alcohol and cigarrettes, so far as I know. Fragility dissolves on stage, though, when you're wowing every cat in the room. When everyone who's there is there because for you.
The guitar player, my escort tells me, can't wait to go home and shoot up. That's true, too-- I didn't notice the bandages until they were pointed out. Burbon blares a few blocks beyond, and we retire to a hookah bar where I meet a girl who was in peace corps and is now in yale law. She has pretty dreadlocks and is from the city and her younger brother, Langston, reminds me of my own-- outspoken, courageous and thoughtless and charming. they are there to celeb rate their mother's birthday. She wears a fanny-pack and an ugly Hawaiian shirt. Her short, thin, white hair is close-cropped and here next to her sleek young grown-up children she seems out of place in the dim, stylish haze. I can't imagine having children of another race-- would they always think of themselves as different, as not-of-me? She might be lonely, and then again, it may be that none of this might have ever occured to her in her whole life.
posted by Elizabeth at 7:40 PM
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