I spent my last day off here in New Orleans observing the people, eating the food and enjoying the music. I have walked miles in this city over the last few months and can say I am a soul enriched by the association of a life lived excessively, but there can be too much of a good thing and I can feel the weight of this lifestyle bearing down on me. I have gained many friends that I am sure will play out in some story or song in the future and have observed things deep and profound in meaning and some things just down-right unexplainable. I have seen beautiful faces with ugly souls, innocent youth fed to the carnal lions, rag-tag clickety-clack bombastic brothers playing rhythms I still have thumping in my head, and old-weathered souls with sweetness in their hearts that would nurse you like one of their own. I spent a few hours today down on Royal Street in the French Quarter working on a song I started after my first weekend here about some things I witnessed. I thought it would be cool to just be part of the experience. Sit amongst the Trampled and gasp for air. Maybe see something that would pressurize a brain storm. Amongst a lonely pigeon I found an alley behind St. Louis Cathedral that connected Jackson Square to Royal Street in hopes that some ghost of history past might stumble drunkenly down the little shale stone mosaic tile and squat next to me. When he finally arrived, we talked about what it meant to be alive and human… confessed a few sins and indulged a couple fantasies even. I posed the question…What really is the heart of this city? We were interrupted by a lady offering up a lucky penny, but we both agreed it would be better off for the next guy. After all he’s a ghost and I’m a horrible thrift. Eventually after much discourse and talking in tongues I was urged to the front of the church, for sometimes the answers you seek are at the entrance and not the exit of life’s journey. As I peered around the corner cautiously I saw the normal cacophony of weekend wanderers and very vocal vacationers and saw nothing obvious. I stretched out into the flat mindful of every step, perusing with squinted eyes the cracks in the walkway, the cracks on the storied faces, the cracks in the used high school sousaphone……the cracks…..the craaaacks……the craaaaaaacks……… From across a tarot card reading oracle with gypsy dressings, I took notice of the Catholic clergymen unlocking the doors releasing the Mass masses and peered my eyes skyward to the cross at the holiest of perches. Then the church bells went off in my head…….enlightenment it seems comes from up high. Perhaps I was too close to see. Recruiting my pigeon friend from the alley we flew up high and through the crosshairs mounted on top of the church I spied a fortune teller, a palm reader and a tarot card gambler at the footsteps of the bishop, the archbishop, the knight, the king and the queen. I thought to myself the occult and the divine make for strange bedfellows?!?!? Never mind (but not to be excluded) the musician, the magician, the artist and the poet, the drunk, the journeyman, the mom, the dad, the child, the black, the white, the cajun, the creole, the human, the inhuman, the unhuman and the pigeon. (My apologies to anyone I may have excluded) The heart of this city…..perhaps…. is in the sum of all its people and the acceptance of all the unique personalities living in the last place on earth…… If I may be allowed to reach:)
Disclaimer: This is a drug free post (caffeine excluded)
