Music washes down
Over a sea of faces
Mixing sweat and tears
Sometimes New Orleans is a complicated place.
How can you explain to someone outside of New Orleans why we laugh at tourists who cannot pronounce "beignets" and then revel in the way we knowingly and obstinately mispronounce "Calliope" Street?
Is it the desire to keep close hold on membership to our special club? Or simply our way of keeping close the history of this almost 300-year-old city? Is it an overt gesture of bohemian style which we think sets us grandly apart from the rest of the US? Or is it a stubborn embrace of the bad habits handed down by our uneducated fathers and mothers?
Yes, it's complicated.
But sometimes New Orleans is simple, forthright, and blindingly obvious.
Like Jazz Fest.
You go, you hear music, and you have a beer--with about a hundred thousand other people.
You sweat, you smile, and you commune with humanity.
4 comments:
It's like "Walla Walla Washington." Or restaurants naming something on their menu with Tchoupitoulas - "Trout Tchoupitoulas" at Joey K's for example. A test to see if you are a local or a tourist no doubt.
I love your haiku. It really captures the Jazz Fest experience.
Now if only you could find a way to work in the mango ice...
--YH
Great set at Bonerama. And it's even more complicated to explain to your in-laws who are from Ohio.
...and there's the food, the amazing food.
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