BitterSweetLife

The first and only time I visited New Orleans, I had a hard time seeing the people for the city. At least at first. At Mother’s, the waitress’s lines had to be scripted. The trumpet player and drummer mixing it up in the square knew they were a live display. When I walked into Paddy O’Brien’s in search of a Hurricane, the atmosphere was too deafening to be real. In Bourbon Street at dusk, the postures and catcalls were pure facade.

Almost, you could believe everyone was moving to a script they’d committed to memory. The script, I thought, was New Orleans.




It took a couple days before the people began appearing as entities apart from their creative/swingin’/Cajun! environment. The people started appearing about the same time as the cracks did.

Bourbon Street was too forced to be really festive. The gumbo sometimes featured sand. The beggars really were desperate. And surprisingly, the culture embraced death—in a token manner, anyhow—above-ground graves dotting all the city maps. New Orleans was raucous beauty. Porticoes bright but chipped. Spanish moss caressing crypts.



You saw how tenuous the whole place’s grasp on Art and Passion actually was. The jazz maestros playing in Preservation Hall sweated while they jammed; when they snapped at people with video cameras, you sensed this wasn’t the venue of their dreams. When you strolled into a restaurant just before the evening traffic flooded in, you could catch the proprietor looking bored. The trinkets and T-shirts at the Bazaar by the Café Du Monde sold more briskly than the real art propped up in corner shops.



New Orleans was people, and the people were restive. The place was bittersweet, all the more for the cover-all blush that smeared the hollows between her better features. The glorious sunsets didn’t quite obscure the fast-food trash littering the streets.

Eventually, I’m happy to say, the city’s populace eclipsed her. The musicians were more memorable than their jazz. The beggers outdid the beignets. New Orleans is her people.

They’re who I’m praying for when I pray for New Orleans.