Big Easy's persuasion

The first time I visited New Orleans I fell asleep going the wrong way on the trolley. I had intended to visit the French Quarter. Instead I woke up at Audubon Park. Out my trolley window appeared a wonderland of fountains, flora and fields. Live Oak trees, made wise and dry by centuries under the sun, were dressed in Spanish Moss that hung from the branches like hair. The old trees lined the perimeter of a lagoon, which was constantly circled by bikers, roller bladers, ducklings, and children, moving in and out of the arboreal shadows, criss-crossing each other with smiles. It was February. It was spring time. It was the beginning of festival season.

It seemed fitting that I spent my first morning in New Orleans sitting on the branch of a 200 year old oak tree reading stories by Gogol, the great Russian absurdist. My favorite story of his has always been “The Nose,” a tale about an aspiring statesman whose nose leaves him in his sleep and goes to town, only to become a more respectable citizen than his owner. The Nose needed only a morning to do it. Gogol used many symbols, but I have always preferred a literal interpretation, the comic image of a man's nasal extremity being separate and autonomous, patrolling the streets of a strange town and gaining the acceptance and celebration of its citizens.

The next night I was drinking Wild Turkey and dancing on Congress Street, watching the Mardi Gras’ precursory Krew de View parade fling its way through the Marigny. The theme was similar to years past: sex and politics. The floats were appropriately satirical and depictive. Men dressed as sperm chasing a fertile egg, an Obama-faced donkey being ridden by a gay soldier in pink pajamas exclaiming “Do ask, Do tale,” and Sarah Palin firing a machine gun from a rotating tea cup. But towards the end emerged the mightiest of floats, a giant thrusting phallus from outer space. It shot steam and expressed a simple message, “Spread the love.” To me, besides being wonderfully crude and cosmic, it seemed like a message from Gogol himself. An absurd extremity floating through a cloud of its own ejaculate, trailing an army of sperm ready to execute its principal message. The space-age penis, separate and seemingly autonomous, was accepted and celebrated by the natives who danced around it. In Russian, nose (hoc) spelled backwards is dream, and I could hardly imagine such a scene to exist outside of that realm, and yet there we all were, a vibrant, dancing community. It was the last informal invitation I would need to move to the absurd city of New Orleans.

The Space-Age float 3 months after Krew de Vieux

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Three months later, I accepted an offer to join a teaching program in New Orleans. I loved Pittsburgh but I was getting bored with its lack of sunshine and color. I loaded my car in early May, when it was still rainy and gray, and left.

After driving 1,000 miles, from Richmond, VA to the Big Easy, I unpacked my bags at my summer apartment and walked down the street to the Bayou St. John and joined a crowd at a local, free music festival, the Mid-City Boogaloo. I had been in the city for fifteen minutes and already I was drinking beer, eating Jamaican plantains and chicken, and sitting on the edge of the bayou while a Zydeco blues rock band jimmied a crowd of several hundred. Next to the stage was a large statue of a swampy Poseidon. He was smiling. His skin was green and his hair was blue. He had likely traveled through the Louisiana bayou to get here, and he obviously liked it here, because his arms were wide open, ready for a hug, a traditionally irritable and vain God letting his greasy hair down and opening his arms to embrace his locals by the water, despite an erratic history together. If my arms were wide enough, I would have hugged him back. Instead, I tipped my beer to him and picked up where I left off, dancing in the streets with my new neighbors.